Abercrombie & Fitch Ditches Mohair After PETA Exposé

First-Ever Eyewitness Investigation of Mohair Industry Shows Workers Slowly Killing, Mutilating Crying Goats

For Immediate Release:
May 9, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

A new PETA video exposé of the mohair industry in South Africa—the source of more than 50 percent of the world’s mohair—has prompted several top international retailers to ban the cruelly obtained material, and now, New Albany–based Abercrombie & Fitch has joined the list.

PETA’s exposé, which is the first of its kind and encompasses 12 farms visited in January and February of this year, shows workers dragging goats by the horns and legs and lifting them off the floor by the tail, which could break their spines. Goat kids, who were being shorn for the first time, cried out in fear. Afterward, workers threw them across the floor. PETA has asked law-enforcement agencies to file charges, as appropriate, for what the group believes are violations of South Africa’s Animals Protection Act, 1962. An investigation is underway.

“Abercrombie & Fitch recognizes that no sweater or scarf is worth the blood, fear, and cries of gentle baby goats—and all other retailers should, too,” says PETA Director of Corporate Affairs Anne Brainard. “PETA is reminding shoppers to check clothing labels carefully and to leave any item with mohair in it on the rack.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—notes that many goats’ sensitive ears were mutilated with pliers, which left them screaming in pain. Shearers—who are paid by volume, not by the hour—worked quickly and carelessly, leaving goats cut up and bleeding. Workers roughly stitched them up without giving them any pain relief.

Farmers admitted that after shearing, many goats die from exposure to the cold wind and rain—40,000 reportedly died of exposure across South Africa in just one weekend. Unwanted goats also died in agonizing ways: On one farm, a worker slowly cut the throats of fully conscious goats with a dull knife and then broke their necks, hacking one animal’s head right off. Other goats were hauled to a slaughterhouse, where they were electrically shocked, hung upside down, and slashed across the throat.

Abercrombie & Fitch is one of numerous retailers—including Anthropologie, Express, Gap, H&M, Old Navy, Topshop, and Zara—to agree never to use mohair in their products following the investigation.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.