Anthropologie, Express Won’t Use Mohair After PETA Exposé

Top U.S. Retailers Ban Mohair Products After Landmark Investigation Shows Mohair Industry Workers Slowly Killing, Mutilating Crying Goats

For Immediate Release:
May 4, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

A breaking PETA video exposé of the mohair industry in South Africa—the source of more than 50 percent of the world’s mohair—prompted several top international retailers to ban the material, and now, just days later, Anthropologie and Express have joined the list.

Anthropologie received more than 18,000 letters from PETA supporters before it announced that “[d]ue to the potential for the mistreatment of animals,” it won’t buy or produce mohair products as of March 2019. After hearing from PETA, Express also announced that it will not sell items containing the cruelly obtained material. They join Arcadia Group, H&M Group, Inditex apparel brands, Gap, Athleta, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and numerous other brands that have gone mohair-free—and PETA is now calling on Forever 21 to follow suit.

“No sweater or scarf is worth the blood and cries of gentle baby goats,” says PETA Director of Corporate Affairs Anne Brainard. “PETA is calling on Forever 21 and all other retailers to join Anthropologie, Express, and other top brands in refusing to support the cruel mohair industry.”

PETA’s eyewitness exposé reveals that goat kids, who were being shorn for the first time, cried out in fear. 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. Unwanted goats died in agonizing ways: One 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.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—has asked law-enforcement agencies to investigate and file charges, as appropriate, for potential violations of South Africa’s Animals Protection Act, 1962.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.