WOOL
“Where comparisons between wool and other fibres, both natural and synthetic, are made, inclusion of enteric methane emissions means that wool will consistently have the highest GWP [global warming potential] impact.”
source: IWTO (2012) Understanding the environmental impacts of wool: A review of Life Cycle Assessment studies)
Australia is the highest wool-producing country in the world with 375,000 tons (340 million kilograms) of greasy wool per year. Greasy wool refers to shorn fleece before it’s been cleaned and processed.
According to ABD (Australian Bureau of Statistics) Australia’s massive $3 billion wool industry is 71 million sheep and lambs in Australia is more than twice the number of cows and pigs combined (3 million pigs, 2.6 million dairy cattle and 24 million beef cattle) and three-fold the number of human Australians.
These sheep are a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, desertification and water scarcity, yet wool is often marketed as “eco-friendly”.
Global demands for wool have helped create the dry, hot conditions in which massive fires have reached catastrophic proportions in Australia in 2019. Tens of thousands of sheep have been burned to death, sometimes fenced-in and unable to escape.
Livestock contributes 14.5% to global GHG emissions - more than the global transportation sector. Ditching wool, leather, meat and dairy can have bigger impacts than taking cars off the road and airplanes out of the sky.
According to the United Nations, “The world’s sheep population is just over one billion—one for roughly every six people. Nearly half are in Asia and the Near and Middle East. Sheep are the species with the highest number of recorded breeds—contributing 25 percent to the global total for mammals.”19 In New Zealand, which has approximately 48 million sheep, methane emissions from enteric fermentation, coming mostly from sheep, constitute almost 50 percent of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions. This has a huge impact on climate change. Combine that with erosion, water pollution, resource needs like water, graze-land, processing needs, etc., and wool becomes a lot less sustainable that we’d like to think. The breeding and perpetuation of this industry is ecologically devastating.20
Another myth is that wool is natural and just a haircut. But there is a lot more that goes into wool textiles than a haircut. In most forms of animal farming where the males are not discarded or killed right away (where they still represent some economic importance), males are often castrated to prevent aggression. There was a time where castration was accomplished by either biting off the testicles of lambs, as nineteenth-century, English agricultural writer William Humphrey Marshall (who fought for improved farming standards) described in 1810: “…they open the scrotum, take hold of the testicles with their teeth, and with violence tear them out… the peretonæum is ruptured, the vasa deferentia are severed frem the testicles, and springing back, form a kind of bow from the urethra…[sic]”,21 or another method wherein the farmer pins the lamb down with one hand, uses his teeth to hold the lambs’ testicles in his mouth while the other free hand slices off the taut scrotum, as described on a family history website:
Us kids were allowed to watch the men do this bloody work. They would hold the testicles tight underneath, slit the skin holding the testicle in, put their mouth down and get hold of the testicle with their teeth, lift it up a bit, slice it off with the knife in their other hand and then spit the testicle on the ground. The man doing this had blood all over his mouth and face. There was a big heap of testicles and lamb tails on the ground but the testicles were soon cleaned up by the many black crows that lived there.22
“As recently as 2011, sheep farmers were reported by the Wyoming Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to have contracted diseases specific to ingesting fecal matter while using their teeth to castrate lambs.23
In 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, seven separate undercover video investigations on large-scale wool operations in Australia, the United States, Argentina, Chile and the UK revealed gruesome practices that sent shockwaves through the fashion industry. The Argentinean farm network, Ovis 21, touts itself as specifically providing “responsibly sourced” and “sustainable” wool. So high are the farms’ stated standards that companies known for ethical and environmental positions, like Patagonia and Stella McCartney, sourced their wool from Ovis 21, trusting their noble claims. Many Kering brands including Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Brioni, Christopher Kane, and Volcom also sourced wool from Ovis 21. “The investigation revealed that “some lambs were still alive “and kicking when a worker drove a knife into their legs to start skinning them”24 Patagonia released a statement in response to the investigation:
Three minutes long, the video contains graphic footage depicting inhumane treatment of lambs and sheep; of castration; of tail docking (the removal of a sheep’s tail); and slaughter of lambs for their meat.... beyond verifying that no mulesing occurs, we have not audited its animal-welfare practices and were unaware of the issues raised in the video.25
After meeting with investigators, all aforementioned brands committed to no longer sourcing from Ovis 21. Patagonia’s CEO Rose Marcario released a statement saying, “We failed to implement a comprehensive process to assure animal welfare, and we are dismayed to witness such horrifying mistreatment.”26 But it must be asked, if these abuses are happening on a “responsible” Argentinean farm like Ovis 21, and happening in countries like the United States and Australia with higher animal welfare standards than many other wool-producing countries (China being the global leader), what nightmares-on-Earth must be transpiring on farms in places with more poorly enforced ethical standards, or none at all? The problem for these brands will be that any time you shine a light—or in this case a hidden camera—on a scaled-up animal operation, these types of abuses are inevitable, and a truly ethical source of wool in high enough volumes to satisfy luxury or mainstream market demands simply does not exist. Slaughter is an inherent part of the wool industry, because many wool farms raise animals for both wool and meat. The abuses documented on various wool farms are commonplace, and because they are a result of standard industry practices, similar abuses occur across all investigations.
In the investigation from November of 2015, a large-scale sheep farm near Cooper Pedy, Australia, was secretly documented and observed. The investigator captured images and video of ferociously rough handling of sheep being shorn, mutilated and slaughtered. Farmers and farm workers were documented kicking sheep in the face in an attempt to get them to move, throwing sheep 8 feet into the air to come slamming down on a shearing platform, mulesing and tail-docking without painkillers, standing on the necks and faces of sheep to keep them pinned-down while being shorn, slamming orphaned lambs against the ground to kill them (resulting in a slow death where the lamb cried out and kicked until he finally died) and making huge, bloody gashes in the sheep with the “shears with no veterinary care observed. Investigators observed a general atmosphere of hyper-masculinity and sexual violence in both the language used by, and behavior of the farm workers, who were caught inserting their fingers into the anuses of sheep to keep them moving up the shearing platform. When the animals resisted, moved slowly, or struggled during the shearing process, they were met with frustrated violence, being slammed against the ground, punched, kicked, hit with shears and verbally assaulted with the phrases like, “You lay down again, you cunt, I’ll kill you.”27
Similar conditions were documented in the 2017 investigation at a farm in Utah, Red Pine Land & Livestock, that had previously been a supplier to Patagonia only a month prior to the investigation, where “most of the sheep shorn had bloody wounds”28 and where pregnant sheep were left shorn, without shelter in the desert to give birth,29 violating the Patagonia Wool Standard (PWS) that was put in place in response to previous investigations. In the PWS, it is required that “all sheep have access to effective shade, shelter and/or windbreaks, to protect them from adverse weather conditions.”30
“Wild breeds of sheep, of which only a few are left in North America, naturally shed or keep their hair and wool depending upon the climate, but because sheep have been selectively bred over time to have more skin and more wool with the goal of increasing the profits of sheep farmers, most domesticated sheep now need to be shorn in warmer climates. This is a perfect example of how exploitation of animals through selective breeding creates dangerous and cruel scenarios that are inherent to sheep farming and wool production, as well as mythologies surrounding who sheep are. Many people believe sheep need to be shorn and that this is the natural order of things, as opposed to a very intentional biotechnology called domestication.
For the last fifty years, many wool operations, especially in Australia’s merino wool industry, where sheep have been bred to have extra, wrinkly skin not suited to the Australian environment, mulesing, a practice that involves the often un-anaesthetized cutting away of large chunks of skin around the lambs’ buttocks is performed in an attempt to smooth the skin and prevent a common and sometimes deadly blowfly maggot infestation called flystrike.31 Flystrike occurs when merino sheep, whose extra skin forms a gutter around their anus, capturing feces and urine and attracting the blowfly, are infested with the larvae of the fly which feed on the sheep’s tissue. Flystrike does not only affect the sheep on their backside, but this is the most common site at which it occurs. During the mulesing mutilation, lambs are forcibly separated from their mothers and restrained on their backs in what the wool industry calls a cradle (a rotating device that looks like a carousel of four bucket-seats with stirrups). All lambs have their legs restrained so that ears can be punctured and tagged. Male lambs can be castrated with a tight band around their scrotum, cutting off circulation to the testes. Vaccinations can be administered, tails can be cut off, and the skin around their rectums can be sliced off. The practice is being phased out in New Zealand but not in Australia, whose wool industry went back on a promise of a phase-out by the end of 2010.32
There is no denial among sheep farmers that lambs and sheep feel intense pain and stress, but the rationalization often used is that the trauma experienced in the cradle is a necessary cruelty to prevent a far worse fate. Several videos advocating for mulesing have been uploaded to YouTube in recent years as public scrutiny has increased. In one video, the narrator explains, “As they say, you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.”33 In another video created by sheep farmers uploaded to YouTube in 2011, the use of Trisolfen is showcased, an anesthetic and antiseptic applied to the wound after the skin has been cut and tail severed. Even with the use of pain relief like this, the severing of the tail, which includes vertebrae, and the puncturing and clipping of the ears, and cutting of large pieces of skin surrounding the breech, are done prior to administering pain relief.
According to Australian animal welfare standards, persons performing these mutilations (often called “surgery,” “procedures,” “tasks,” and other clinical terms intended to minimize the public perception of cruelty) should “have knowledge, experience and skills to perform a general husbandry task in a satisfactory manner,” but then concludes that, “Formal assessment of ability is not required,” which amounts to only a mere suggestion that the persons mutilating lambs should be able to perform the mutilation quickly and accurately.34 In the same set of guidelines, pain relief specifically during tail docking is not required or even recommended for sheep under six months old. In drastic comparison, the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council requires an actual veterinary surgeon to perform the tail docking, stating:
…tail docking of lambs above the age of 3 months should only be undertaken by a veterinary surgeon using pain relief; pain relief reduces the impact of tail docking on welfare and should be used when and wherever possible; tail docking for cosmetic reasons cannot be justified; and surgical tail docking should be prohibited “except when performed by a veterinary surgeon using pain relief.35”
In New Zealand:
…surgical methods of tail removal are associated with greater risks of bleeding and infection; rubber rings and hot knife both cause a similar degree of acute pain and distress, and considerably less than surgical methods; high tension bands are likely to cause a high degree of unnecessary pain because of the high pressure they generate, and other methods are preferred; hot knives need to be kept at the right temperature to avoid repeated applications (too cold) or unnecessary tissue damage (too hot).36
In Canada:
… acceptable methods are electricor gas-heated docking iron (hot knife), rubber rings, crush-and-cut device and rubber ring plus crushing device, all to be used after lamb has consumed colostrum and before 7 days of age; after 7 days of age veterinary advice should be sought.37
Regulations and standards like these are almost always vague recommendations and go unenforced. The resources required to train, monitor, and ensure that standards are met would so drastically compromise profits that the farmers would go out of business, and like any animal industry, the goal is to maximize profits and minimize costs. All of these mutilations are suggested when “failing to do so adds a significant cost to the farm system.”38 The myth that happy animals produce the most profits is exactly that, a myth. The products and body parts of the most intensively farmed, high-yielding, and least-expensive animals produce the highest profits. In the fragrance industry, for example, the production of civet is most profitable when the civet cats are kept caged and stressed and fed a diet of raw sheep meat, resulting in the highest yields of civet. Within the period of four years (the time required to fill one zebu horn with the waxy civet) this highly sought-after perfumer’s ingredient is painfully scraped from the anal glands approximately 400 to 800 times, and one civet cat will have consumed the meat from approximately 50 sheep. Farm workers “tease” the civet cats by striking the cages in which the animals are kept, maintaining a perpetual state of fear. Happy civet cats, it turns out, do not produce as much civet.39
“In Australia, once sheep are considered ‘spent’ (when their wool yields taper off), it is more valuable to ship them off to be slaughtered for meat and replace them with younger, higher wool-yielding lambs and sheep. For an industry that is perceived and marketed by many to be just a haircut, this final grueling and deadly blow should reveal the purely profit-seeking agenda of the industry. Australian spent sheep are of more economic value when millions-per-year are exported alive to be slaughtered for meat or religious sacrifice in countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.40 The journey is not a gentle one, sometimes lasting weeks at a time. Approximately 550,000 sheep died en route from 2000 to 2012.41 A total of 4,000 sheep died from heat stroke on just one ship on one journey in 2014, and in 2015 sheep are being exported to the Middle East even though the most severe heatwave ever recorded consumed the Middle East at the same time.42 The conditions on export ships are so bad, in fact, that even the experts hired by the industry are speaking out against it. Dr. Lynn Simpson submitted a shocking report in 2013 outlining gross neglect, for which she threatened prosecution, among animals including intentional water deprivation, dehydration, pneumonia, chronic fatigue, en route birth, severe lesions with exposed bone and joints, inability to lie down or rest without being trampled or smothered, ‘waterfalls’ of feces from upper decks onto sheep on lower decks.43 These disgraces are only ended when the surviving animals arrive for slaughter. Slaughter after live export can be horrifying, as an investigation by Animals Australia revealed in November 2012.
Video footage of the cull, obtained by Animals Australia, shows absolute chaos with animals being dragged, beaten, having their throats sawn at with blunt knives and thrown into mass graves -some of them still alive hours later.44
Until 1993, sheep farmers in the UK and New Zealand were required to use sheep dip, a bath of toxic chemicals often containing arsenic, nicotine, lime sulfur, and OPs (organophosphate pesticides from which chemical warfare agents were later developed)45 DDT, lindane, dieldrin, and aldrin to prevent infestations—and people are still getting sick from it.46 Modern sheep dip still contains OPs as well as zinc, copper, synthetic pyrethroids, and insect growth regulators.47
Based on standard industry practices and investigative findings outlined here, it is not possible to obtain wool that meets mass market demands while also meeting stringent ethical standards.