Next, New Look, Ted Baker, and Matalan to End Use of Alpaca Following PETA Appeal

Next, New Look, Ted Baker, and Matalan to End Use of Alpaca Following PETA Appeal

Brands’ Compassionate Decision Follows Exposé Showing Suffering Alpacas

London – After viewing a PETA exposé revealing that crying alpacas are roughly shorn and left cut up and bleeding from deep wounds, fashion brands Next, New Look, Matalan, and Ted Baker have all confirmed that they will end the use of alpaca in their collections. River Island, Hunter and Barbour have confirmed they already prohibited the use of the fibre.

An undercover investigation into Mallkini – the world’s largest privately owned alpaca farm in Peru – shows that workers held struggling, crying alpacas by the ears as they were roughly shorn with electric clippers, causing some to vomit out of fear. The quick, rough shearing left the animals with deep wounds, which were sewn up without adequate pain relief.

“Consumers today want nothing to do with materials that animals were tormented for,” says PETA Director of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor. “We urge all retailers to stand up for vulnerable alpacas by following these companies’ compassionate example and introducing a ban on this cruelly obtained material.”

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – notes that in addition to causing gentle alpacas immense suffering, the production of alpaca fibre is also terrible for the planet. The Higg Materials Sustainability Index ranked alpaca as the second most environmentally damaging material after silk, noting that it’s six times as harmful as polyester and more than four times as damaging as modal, viscose, rayon, lyocell, acrylic, and other vegan materials.

The brands join luxury fashion house Valentino as well as Marks & Spencer and Esprit, which have all previously committed to phasing out the material. Gap Inc (which owns Banana Republic, Athleta, and other brands) and H&M Group (which owns eight brands) have cut ties with Mallkini’s parent company, the Michell Group.

PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

Contact:

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

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