Photos: H&M Wool Cruelty on Display in Dramatic PETA Banner Drop

London – Shoppers got an eyeful today, when PETA supporters took over H&M’s Putney store, dropping a giant banner from the roof reading: ‘Sheep Kicked, Beaten and Killed for Wool. Don’t Buy It’. The protest follows a PETA Asia investigation into a NATIVA-certified wool farm, where workers were filmed kicking and stomping on sheep, dragging lambs by their legs, and leaving animals with gaping wounds after shearing. The farm supplied H&M Group with wool marketed as “responsibly sourced.”

Images are available here.

“Sensitive sheep face bloody, painful shearings and agonising deaths at the slaughterhouse – all for wool that we simply don’t need,” says PETA Vice President of Programmes Elisa Allen. “PETA is calling on H&M to hang up wool and embrace kind, vegan materials that harm no one, and urges shoppers to do the same.”

The action comes a month after PETA “models” disrupted H&M’s Autumn/Winter 2026 runway show at London Fashion Week, calling on the retailer to stop selling wool.

PETA notes that sheep are highly social animals who form strong bonds with each other. They grow depressed if isolated from their flock and communicate their emotions through facial expressions, just like humans. PETA entities have now released 17 exposés of over 150 wool industry operations across four continents – revealing that even on self-proclaimed “ethical” and “responsible” farms, extreme cruelty and violence are rampant, and that sheep exploited for wool are ultimately sent to slaughter years before reaching their natural lifespan once their wool production declines.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a sheep is a dog is a boy. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.  

Contact:

Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

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