Forever 21 Targeted Over Shearing Cruelty
PETA Launches #Never21 Billboard Campaign to Alert Consumers to Sheep Abuse
For Immediate Release:
September 9, 2019
Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382
PETA has videotaped the cruelty that goes on, out of sight, inside sheep-shearing sheds around the world and revealed that frightened lambs and sheep are hit in the face with metal clippers, they’re stomped on, their heads are smashed into the floor, and they’re subjected to other outrageous acts of abuse that today’s conscientious consumers wouldn’t sanction if they knew about them. Despite having been asked to switch to wool-free options that are lighter weight and fashionable, Forever 21 has refused to make the switch, compelling PETA to put up a billboard near the Forever 21 store in the West Towne Mall showing a sheep’s sweet face and the words “I Want You to Change. Don’t Buy Wool. Wear Vegan.”
Recent PETA video exposés recorded on sheep farms in Australia—the world’s top exporter of wool—show a farm manager carving swaths of flesh from lambs’ hindquarters as the animals thrash and cry and one worker bragging, “I hit one [sheep] so hard I knocked it out .… F**ked it under the jaw a bit too hard.” The videos are PETA’s 10th and 11th exposés of the global wool industry on four continents since 2014, all of which the group has shared with Forever 21—but the company has refused to take action.
“Consumers deserve to know that Forever 21 is profiting from an industry in which gentle lambs and sheep are beaten, mutilated, terrorized, and even killed for wool,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s ad encourages shoppers to steer clear of Forever 21 until the company agrees to act compassionately and switch to stylish vegan knits.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals.
The billboard is located on W. Beltline Highway, directly before exit 255 heading west and just 1.2 miles from the Forever 21 store. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
