Have You Seen PETA’s New Billboard in Yorkshire?
Are you heading to the Great Yorkshire Show in Harrogate? Don’t miss PETA’s new billboard that’s just minutes away from the showground.
Sarah Warne Photography.
The grotesque event – which takes place in the county with the fourth largest sheep population in England – hosts parades and shearing competitions that exploit gentle, non-consenting animals. PETA’s billboard urges farmers who raise sentient beings for their fleece or flesh to transition to sustainable plant farming and grow nutritious vegetables, grains, pulses, and fruits that are kinder to animals, the planet, and our health instead.
What’s Wrong With Wool?
Sheep used for their fleece are genetically manipulated to grow an unnatural amount of wool, and they are routinely abused on farms and in shearing sheds. PETA entities have shared exposés of 117 wool-industry operations around the world – including in the UK – that document workers kicking, punching, and slitting the throats of conscious, struggling sheep.
Farmers commonly sever lambs’ tails and castrate the males without pain relief. When 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 is also terrible for 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 in the processing of wool, has led the Made-By Environmental Benchmark for Fibres to rank wool as a “Class E” material – the worst possible category.
Each year, millions of lambs bred for their flesh die from exposure, malnutrition, or disease within days of birth, and survivors are typically slaughtered when they’re just 10 weeks old.
Support Vegan Farming
Everyone needs farmers, but farmers don’t need to exploit living, feeling beings and interfere with their bodies – because no one needs wool, meat, or milk. We encourage them to hang up their shears and leave the heartbreak and violence behind.
Please join our campaign by asking the government to fund ethical, sustainable plant farming.
Sheep Need Your Help
Please never wear wool. Always read the label, and if it says “wool”, leave it on the shelf. Check out our guide to compassionate fashion:
Please also urge these brands to ditch wool:
