PETA Requests That Sheep Memorial Plaque Be Installed at Former Wool Warehouse on Victoria Street
Group Flags Textile Building for Tribute to Animals Abused for Wool
Newark – Following the opening of the The Textile Building on Victoria Street, a 39-apartment residential development that was formerly a wool warehouse, PETA sent a letter requesting that a memorial plaque, designed to “commemorate the gentle animals who suffered for the wool that transited through this site”, be installed at the address.
The plaque (image available here) features an engraved image of a sheep with the words, “In Memory of the Sheep and Lambs Who Were Abused and Killed for the Wool That Once Transited Through This Building”.
“Sheep used for wool are treated as nothing more than textile-producing machines,” writes PETA Vice President of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor. “A tribute to the sensitive, complex individuals whose fleece was stolen and stored at The Textile Building would inspire the public to transition – as the building has – from animal wool to natural and humane wool alternatives such as organic cotton, hemp, Tencel, and bamboo.”
In its letter, PETA points out that sheep used for wool are genetically manipulated to grow an unnatural amount of wool and routinely abused on farms and in shearing sheds. PETA entities have shared exposés of 117 wool-industry operations around the world – including those in the United Kingdom – where workers have been documented kicking, punching, and slitting the throats of conscious, struggling sheep. Farmers commonly sever lambs’ tails and castrate the males without pain relief. When their wool production slows, at around 5 or 6 years old, the animals are crammed onto lorries and sent on gruelling journeys to slaughterhouses.
Raising sheep for wool also negatively impacts the environment. As ruminant animals, sheep produce large amounts of methane, a planet-warming greenhouse gas. This, along with the industry’s energy use, the land clearing undertaken to house sheep, the animals’ waste, and the use of chemicals to clean wool has led the Made-By Environmental Benchmark for Fibres to rank wool as a “Class E” material – the worst category possible. Similarly, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s Higg Index ranks wool as the eighth most environmentally damaging material in terms of cradle-to-gate (before reaching the consumer), behind other animal-derived materials like silk, alpaca fleece, and cow leather.
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 Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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