Urban Outfitters Under Fire After PETA Wool Industry Exposé
Urban Outfitters Under Fire After PETA Wool Industry Exposé
Workers Under Investigation After Being Filmed Kicking, Punching, and Cutting Sheep
London – As the festive season fast approaches, PETA is releasing brand-new footage from a PETA Asia investigation showing violence towards sheep in Australia’s wool industry – which produces 88% of the world’s supply used in apparel – and urging people to cross gifts made of wool off their shopping lists.
One shearer stood on a sheep’s neck and punched two others in the face, a supervisor kicked two sheep, and shearers cut swathes of skin off some sheep and left many others with bloody wounds. Another shearer didn’t give a sheep any painkillers before trying to stitch up a gaping wound with a needle that appeared to be blunt. In another incident, a shearer cut a heavily pregnant sheep on her vaginal prolapse and then used her own wool to wipe her blood up off the floor. When PETA Asia’s investigator took the sheep to a veterinarian, it was discovered that she had been trying to deliver a lamb, who was stillborn, and she had to be euthanised.
PETA is urging Urban Outfitters, Inc, which sells Australian wool, to stop selling it and other animal-derived materials across its brands, which include Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban Outfitters.
“By selling wool jumpers and scarves, Urban Outfitters is profiting off sheep who were kicked, punched, or left in a pool of their own blood on a shearing shed floor,” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “This festive season, PETA is urging Urban Outfitters to take a stand against animal abuse by switching exclusively to the stylish vegan designs that it already offers.”
The investigator also documented workers discussing other shearers who had broken a lamb’s leg, wounded sheep, and gouged them in the eye. One shearer still employed by the crew allegedly bit a sheep’s ear off in anger. As a result of PETA Asia’s findings, Victoria officials have opened an investigation. This is the sixth exposé of the Australian shearing industry and the 14th exposé of the global wool industry by PETA and its international affiliates, which have now found cruelty to sheep on 117 properties in six countries on four different continents.
Photos are available here, and broadcast-quality footage is available here.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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