18
Feb
H&M Bans Cruelly-Produced Australian Wool
- posted at 9:59 AM
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- Comments (19)
I am one happy bunny. PETA US has been working with H&M - the giant clothes retailer that adorns many a high street here in the UK (1,500 stores worldwide!) - and following discussions with them about how lambs in the Australian wool industry are mutilated during the “mulesing” procedure, the company has made the ethical decision to try and source wool from outside Australia. H&M ensure that any wool it purchases from down under doesn’t come from producers that use mulesing. This decision puts H&M in the company of others like New Look, George, Abercrombie & Fitch, Timberland and leading fashion designer Marc Bouwer, who have all taken similar actions.
What is mulesing? Australian farmers breed sheep to grow extremely wrinkly skin (so they produce more wool), which can collect urine and moisture in the hot weather. Attracted to the moisture, flies lay eggs in the folds of skin, and the hatched maggots can eat the sheep alive. To prevent this, many Australian ranchers perform an operation where they force the sheep onto their backs, restrain their legs and, without painkillers, slice chunks of flesh from their backsides. This is done to encourage smooth, scarred skin that can’t harbour fly eggs, though flies are often attracted to the open wounds, making it ineffective as well as cruel.
In an email to PETA US, the head of environment and corporate social responsibility for H&M wrote: “Our new position is to start immediately to look for non-mulesed (wool) alternatives. We will look for other countries of origin than Australia, and we will investigate any certifications or other ways to prove that merino wool from Australia originates from farms that are not practicing mulesing.”
While PETA advocates an end to the use of sheep for their flesh and wool, and will continue to campaign for this, we also recognise that this announcement is a big step forward. Find out more about the PETA US campaign here.
Well done H&M! See the H&M website for more on their new stance.
H&M image: Curbed / Creative Commons
Thumbs up to H&M! another major chain retail store that shows it has good ethics and is able to take into consideration or be concerned about other issues aside from the usual overriding no. 1 goal of their company ..ie.’making profit’ ..
Now why can’t all the other self-centered and unethical stores follow heed such good example…
e.g. Escada??? BIG THUMBS DOWN to ESCADA!!!