People for the Eating of Tasty Animals
I've never been a big fan of PETA - I find them horrifically extreme and dishonest, and think they give all activists a bad name. There's simply no excuse for activities like handing out Your Mommy Kills Animals fliers to small children. All it does is make people more disinclined to listen to their message...I know after surfing the PETA website for five minutes, I was about ready to up and buy me a couple of fur coats in protest, and I'm an anti-fur person myself! (I was quite disappointed to see David Boreanaz shilling for them, though at least it's for a specific cause I agree with - not chaining up dogs outside for long periods.)
But their new satellite site takes the cake. Wool is Baad! is a pack of lies. My mom has been involved in the fiber community for years (i.e., spinning, weaving, knitting, and other handicrafts) and so I'm in a position to know this. I've gone to sheep fairs. (Which reminds me, the KC SheepFest is coming up soon...mmmm, lamb barbecue.) I've met many sheep owners, who generally treated their animals as pets. I've seen sheep sheared.
For example, I've already seen many of the graphic pictures they show of herds of sheep rotting away on the ground - however, I saw them in their original context, which was not being killed in the line of shearing, but being killed by the Scottish government under suspicion of harboring the sheep equivalent of mad cow (and under heavy protest by the owners of said sheep). The site claims that shearing is inevitably a bloody, painful process - as I mentioned above, I've seen sheep sheared, and it isn't. And if somehow the shearers were so incompetent or hurried as to cut the sheep while they were shearing, as they claim, those shearers would soon find themselves out of a job, because you know what? Bloodstains don't come out of wool, and hence render it unsaleable. So I highly doubt that any halfway-intelligent businessperson would condone this.
As for the "crime" of castrating the male sheep - well, they're castrated because a) it makes for finer wool, b) it makes them less aggressive, and c) it works as population control - not unlike the process of neutering a male dog or cat. It also helps the ewes' health, because, y'know, adult unneutered rams are constantly trying to mate, and it's dangerously unhealthy for ewes to be constantly pregnant. And the claims that sheep are let grow sick and diseased...not so. Sick sheep = poor wool + unsaleable meat, so again, if a business owner has any kind of savvy at all, he or she will keep the sheep healthy.
In fact, the only thing PETA will end up doing by calling for a wool boycott is causing MORE sheep to be killed. As the sales of wool (which does not involve killing the animals) go down, the owners will have no option but to sell the surplus for meat (which does kill the animal). Way to care for the animals, MORONS.
I'll end with a quote from Alicia Silverstone: "It is the 21st Century. I don't think that we should use flesh or the skin of any creature to make ourselves look good. The abuse that is involved in...wool is so outrageous to me. We can do something that's really compassionate or something that's cruel. I really make every effort in my life to make the compassionate choice."
...Oh, Alicia, you hypocrite. Batman and Robin was nothing if not cruel and unusual punishment.
But their new satellite site takes the cake. Wool is Baad! is a pack of lies. My mom has been involved in the fiber community for years (i.e., spinning, weaving, knitting, and other handicrafts) and so I'm in a position to know this. I've gone to sheep fairs. (Which reminds me, the KC SheepFest is coming up soon...mmmm, lamb barbecue.) I've met many sheep owners, who generally treated their animals as pets. I've seen sheep sheared.
For example, I've already seen many of the graphic pictures they show of herds of sheep rotting away on the ground - however, I saw them in their original context, which was not being killed in the line of shearing, but being killed by the Scottish government under suspicion of harboring the sheep equivalent of mad cow (and under heavy protest by the owners of said sheep). The site claims that shearing is inevitably a bloody, painful process - as I mentioned above, I've seen sheep sheared, and it isn't. And if somehow the shearers were so incompetent or hurried as to cut the sheep while they were shearing, as they claim, those shearers would soon find themselves out of a job, because you know what? Bloodstains don't come out of wool, and hence render it unsaleable. So I highly doubt that any halfway-intelligent businessperson would condone this.
As for the "crime" of castrating the male sheep - well, they're castrated because a) it makes for finer wool, b) it makes them less aggressive, and c) it works as population control - not unlike the process of neutering a male dog or cat. It also helps the ewes' health, because, y'know, adult unneutered rams are constantly trying to mate, and it's dangerously unhealthy for ewes to be constantly pregnant. And the claims that sheep are let grow sick and diseased...not so. Sick sheep = poor wool + unsaleable meat, so again, if a business owner has any kind of savvy at all, he or she will keep the sheep healthy.
In fact, the only thing PETA will end up doing by calling for a wool boycott is causing MORE sheep to be killed. As the sales of wool (which does not involve killing the animals) go down, the owners will have no option but to sell the surplus for meat (which does kill the animal). Way to care for the animals, MORONS.
I'll end with a quote from Alicia Silverstone: "It is the 21st Century. I don't think that we should use flesh or the skin of any creature to make ourselves look good. The abuse that is involved in...wool is so outrageous to me. We can do something that's really compassionate or something that's cruel. I really make every effort in my life to make the compassionate choice."
...Oh, Alicia, you hypocrite. Batman and Robin was nothing if not cruel and unusual punishment.