In case you missed it, PETA protestors crashed COS’s New York Fashion Week show on Sunday to decry the Swedish brand’s use of wool, which they said was abusive to sheep. The incident made headlines after videos of Steven Kolb, CEO and president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, forcibly restraining two activists went viral. Now, Kolb is on leave from the CFDA, noting on his personal Instagram on Monday that he would be “taking a voluntary leave from work and meeting with a professional to ensure it never happens again.” GQ has reached out to the CFDA and PETA for comment.
While the images of Kolb taking down animal rights activists are quite sensational, what can we make of the issue central to this altercation? PETA has a firm stance against the use of wool, with their protest signs reading, “Sheep Beaten and Bloodied for Wool, Don’t Buy It!” The organization has also said on its website that “no certification can protect sheep from the inherent cruelty of the wool industry.”
But others argue that there are ways to procure wool that are beneficial to people, animals, and the environment. After centuries of selective breeding to produce as much wool as possible, many sheep need to be sheared because they cannot regulate the excess on their own. As a result, some countries, such as Sweden and Australia, require farmers to shear their sheep at least once a year in order to abide by animal welfare laws. But beyond that, wool has the potential to be a regenerative textile, meaning certain production methods can increase soil health, improve biodiversity, and reduce carbon emissions.
“As long as we have sheep, they’re going to be growing wool,” said Lisa Bergstrand, founder and director of sustainability firm Bergstrand Consultancy. “I think we should use the wool. But of course, I think we should make sure that we farm the sheep in the best way possible, both for the sheep welfare and also for the land, because there’s a huge potential there.”
Bergstrand launched the Good Wool Collective in an effort to educate and assist brands interested in procuring more responsible wool. She said that most brands were concerned about the emissions created by growing wool, although they are increasingly interested in developing better animal welfare standards.
“It’s a big problem that brands don’t have so much awareness of where their material comes from in general,” she said. “And especially when we talk about animal materials, it is very important to have traceability.”
Bergstrand has visited farms across the world and observed the environmental benefits of regenerative sheep farming. During one trip to Australia, she found that one farmer saw his land absorb three times more carbon than it emitted after using a method of holistic grazing, which mimics what sheep would do in the wild. She added that sheep “fertilize the land, and with the regenerative way of farming, it also makes the soils keep a lot more water, which makes it more resistant to both fires and droughts, but also flooding.”
Still, the wool industry is afflicted by animal welfare and environmental issues. Melanie Lary, research and campaigns manager at global animal welfare organization Four Paws said in an email that “many consumers are unaware of the vast animal suffering behind wool production.” Some of these issues include tail docking, castration, and sometimes aggressive shearing.
One of the biggest problems impacting the industry is mulesing, also known as live lamb cutting (LLC), which entails cutting the skin near the lamb’s tail without pain relief. Mulesing is done to prevent flystrike, which is a fatal condition where parasitic flies lay eggs in the folds of a sheep’s skin. Still, Lary said “hundreds of thousands do not survive” this procedure. While the practice is uncommon in the US, it is legal in Australia, which is the second biggest wool producing country in the world.
