Forever 21 Bans Mohair After PETA Exposé

More Than 71,000 People Urged Retailer to Join Growing List of Mohair-Banning Brands After Exposé Showed Workers Mutilating, Killing Goats

For Immediate Release:
June 4, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

After PETA and more than 71,000 concerned consumers urged Forever 21 to ban mohair, the Los Angeles–based retailer joined the nearly 110 other brands worldwide that have agreed to stop selling the material.

The move from Forever 21—the fifth-largest specialty retailer in the U.S., with more than 600 stores in 13 countries—follows PETA’s video exposé of the mohair industry in South Africa, the source of more than 50 percent of the world’s mohair. In thanks, PETA is sending the company a box of delicious vegan chocolates.

PETA’s first-of-its-kind eyewitness exposé shows that shearers—who are paid by volume, not by the hour—worked quickly and carelessly, leaving baby goats cut up and bleeding. Workers roughly stitched them up without giving them any pain relief. And 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’s exposé pulled back the curtain on the gentle baby goats who cried out in fear as they were sheared until bloody for mohair sweaters and scarves,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Forever 21 has joined the quickly growing list of top retailers that recognize that today’s shoppers don’t support cruelty to animals.”

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

Other brands that have banned mohair include Gap, H&M, Topshop, UNIQLO, and Zara, among dozens of others.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.