‘Blood on Your Hands’: Crystal Hefner Calls Out Cruelty Behind Cashmere in New PETA Campaign

For Immediate Release:
January 30, 2024

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Author and former model Crystal Hefner, the widow of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, held nothing back in her just-released tell-all memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, but she isn’t quite done exposing dark secrets. So she’s teamed up with PETA in a new campaign reminding people everywhere that wearing cashmere isn’t cozy—it’s cruel—and, as she says in an accompanying video spot, “If you wear it, you have blood on your hands.”

“Cashmere comes from goats who scream in terror and bleed from open wounds as workers pin them down and rip out their hair,” Hefner says in the video. “Cashmere doesn’t ooze luxury. It oozes blood.”

PETA video investigations into cashmere operations in China and Mongolia—where nearly all the world’s cashmere is produced—have revealed goats screaming in pain and fear as workers pin them down, twist their legs, and tear out their hair with sharp, rake-like metal combs, tearing off pieces of their skin and leaving some with bleeding wounds. Goats deemed no longer profitable are sent to the slaughterhouse, where workers drag them onto the filthy kill floor, bash them over the head with hammers, and slit their throats in full view of other goats before leaving them to slowly bleed out.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.