Forever 21 Targeted Over Shearing Cruelty
PETA Launches #Never21 Bus Shelter Ad Campaign to Alert Consumers to Sheep Abuse
For Immediate Release:
September 23, 2019
Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382
Despite learning from PETA that wool-industry workers hit frightened lambs and sheep in the face with metal clippers, stomp on them, smash their heads into the floor, and abuse them in other ways, Forever 21 still won’t switch to wool-free knits. That’s why PETA has put up ads on 20 bus shelters near two local Forever 21 stores showing a sheep’s sweet face and the words “I’m a Living Being, Not a Sweater. Boycott Forever 21.”
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 revealing cruelty in 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 ads encourage 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.
PETA’s ads are located near the Forever 21 stores at the Penn Square Mall and OKC Outlets. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
