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Sheep are smart, gentle animals who can tell apart different expressions in humans and notice changes in the faces of anxious sheep. They should never be harmed, so a company that claims to produce “ethical” and “humane” wool sounds appealing—but you’re about to see why those labels are complete cap. 🧢
From 2023 to the end of 2024, PETA Asia-Pacific went inside 11 farms and shearing sheds in New Zealand that produce ZQ-certified wool, a sham certification standard developed and owned by The New Zealand Merino Company. The company calls itself “the world's leading ethical wool brand” and claims that “sheep producing the wool are humanely treated.” 🤔 Watch this vid to see for yourself—do you think this is “ethical” or “humane”?
Investigators discovered the following:
- Shearers kicked, beat, stomped on, and threw sheep down chutes. One worker slammed a sheep’s head against a hard wooden board three times.
- Workers whipped, tackled, and hit sheep with objects, including a ski pole.
- Shearers left sheep with gaping wounds that were stitched up without painkillers. One worker laughed at a sheep as blood ran down their face from an eye injury.
- Sheep were forced into super-crowded enclosures, leading to one being smothered to death. Her wool was still shorn to be sold.
- A worker slit the throat of a conscious sheep after days of the sheep struggling and collapsing and dumped her body into a trash pit full of body parts. Investigators often found dead sheep around the farms, including some in trash pits.
- Farmers used dogs to terrorize sheep, sometimes biting them. However, these dogs were also abused—a farmer kicked them in the head, and another farmer jabbed a dog several times with a pole.
New Place, Same Suffering
PETA entities have now released fifteen damning exposés of nearly 130 wool industry operations on four continents. Every single one shows sheep forced to endure extreme suffering. 😰 Companies know that labeling their products as “humane,” “ethical,” and “responsible” tricks consumers into believing that they’re buying compassionately produced goods—but wool is never produced humanely.
If you haven’t, now’s the time to stop wearing and buying wool. By ditching wool for animal-free materials, like acrylic, bamboo, cotton, hemp, modal, polyester, rayon, TENCEL®, and viscose, you can help save sheep from being abused and slaughtered in the wool industry.
Urge Brands to Ditch Wool
Brands like Allbirds, Fjällräven, Helly Hansen, icebreaker, Smartwool, and LVMH’s Loro Piana use the ZQ certification to market wool—urge them to ditch it now! 🚨