Anti-wool Billboards Hit Former Wool Capital of the World

For Immediate Release:

6 April 2016

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327, ext 222; [email protected]

ANTI-WOOL BILLBOARDS HIT FORMER WOOL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

PETA Campaign in West Yorkshire Raises Awareness of Plight of Sheep Who Are Kicked, Punched and Killed for Food and Fashion

West Yorkshire – With spring now upon us, PETA’s anti-wool campaign is heating up. Using a photograph from a PETA exposé of the wool industry, the animal rights group has placed two billboards in Wakefield and Calderdale in West Yorkshire – the former wool capital of the world – that show an abandoned shorn sheep who has collapsed on the floor with a seemingly broken leg, next to the words “I Don’t Belong on Your Plate or in Your Wardrobe. Choose Vegan”.

“We’re taking the message that sheep are neither clothing nor food all the way to the former wool capital of the world”, says PETA Associate Director Elisa Allen. “When every single PETA exposé of the wool industry has revealed cruelty to sheep, some of whom are left with bloody wounds and broken limbs, there’s simply no excuse for anyone to choose a wool sweater or a plate of mutton.”

In the past 16 months, PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – has released five exposés recorded at 37 facilities on three continents, which reveal that sheep are mutilated, abused and skinned alive – even for “responsibly sourced” wool on so-called “sustainable” farms. Shearers are often paid by volume, not by the hour, encouraging fast, violent work, and many sheep are left with gaping wounds that workers then stitch closed without any painkillers.

Life for British sheep is no easier. Wool producers subject lambs to painful mutilations – including castration without any painkillers. It’s considered normal in the wool industry for at least 4 per cent of young lambs to die every spring, primarily because of lameness caused by untreated scald and foot rot (painful bacterial infections).

Once their bodies wear out and they are no longer useful for wool production, sheep are packed onto severely crowded lorries – often without adequate food, water or ventilation- and then taken to abattoirs, where their throats are slit.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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