Step on It! PETA Urges Minister to Update Wool’s Misleading ‘Textile’ Label for Footwear

31.07.2025

London — In a letter sent today to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds, PETA is urging the minister to amend footwear labelling regulations to make clear to consumers that wool, just like leather and sheepskin, is taken from an animal’s body. As PETA’s letter points out, wool is currently labelled with a misleading ‘textile’ composition symbol, which is the same pictogram used for animal-free vegan materials, including cotton, hemp, and polyester.

“Every shoe or slipper made with wool comes from an animal who was likely mercilessly beaten and shorn bloody before being slaughtered,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “Consumers deserve transparency, and PETA is calling on Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds to ensure wool is labelled with a symbol that clearly communicates its animal origins.”

There are good reasons for kind consumers to steer clear of wool. PETA entities’ exposés of more than 150 wool-industry operations on four continents have exposed extreme and rampant abuse of sheep, who have complex emotions, grow depressed if isolated from their flock, and can even detect anxiety in another sheep by observing their face. A recent PETA Asia-Pacific investigation into farms with the ZQ certification, which brands itself as “ethical” and “humane”, revealed shearers kicking, beating, and stomping on sheep; sheep left with gaping wounds that were stitched up without painkillers; and a farmer slitting the throat of a struggling, conscious sheep before dumping her body into a trash pit.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

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