Jo-Ann Stores Bans Mohair After PETA Exposé

Retailer Joins Growing List of Mohair-Banning Brands After Exposé Showed Workers Mutilating, Killing Goats

For Immediate Release:
June 18, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

After PETA urged Jo-Ann Stores to ban mohair, the Hudson-based retailer joined the more than 150 other brands worldwide that have agreed to stop selling the cruelly obtained material.

The move from Jo-Ann Stores—the leading fabric and craft retailer in the U.S., with more than 865 stores across 49 states and a top e-commerce business—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 exposé shows that shearers—who are paid by volume, not by the hour—worked quickly and carelessly, leaving angora goats with gaping wounds. 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 for mohair sweaters and scarves,” says PETA Director of Corporate Affairs Anne Brainard. “Jo-Ann Stores 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 Forever 21, Gap, H&M, Topshop, UNIQLO, Overstock.com, and Zara, among dozens of others.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.