‘Wear Something Vegan’ Anti-Wool Ad Now Up Downtown

PETA Billboard Near Forever 21 Urges People to Steer Clear of Cruelly Obtained Wool Items and Shop Vegan

For Immediate Release:
January 24, 2019

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

As part of its nationwide campaign to inspire consumers to shop vegan, PETA has placed a billboard a mile from the downtown Houston Forever 21 store that shows a sheep’s sweet face alongside the words “We’re Individuals. We’re Not Sweaters. Wear Something Vegan.”

The ad is located at 528 Pierce St. (near the intersection with Smith Street) and is visible from I-45 N. It will be up for four weeks.

“Just like us, sheep are flesh and blood, feel pain and fear, and value their lives,” says PETA Campaign Manager Christina Sewell. “PETA’s billboard encourages shoppers to opt for cozy and chic cruelty-free clothing that no sheep were shorn bloody for.”

PETA and its affiliates have released 11 exposés of 99 sheep-shearing operations on four continents revealing that the animals are beaten, stomped on, mutilated, and even skinned alive for wool. Because shearers are typically paid by volume, not by the hour, they’re driven to work quickly and carelessly. Strips of sheep’s skin—and even pieces of their ears—are cut or torn off during shearing, and the most gaping wounds are stitched up without any pain relief.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—notes that a recently released study by the Higg Materials Sustainability Index ranked sheep’s wool, leather, and silk among the top five most environmentally damaging materials and found that alpaca wool is the number one offender.

The group is placing the ad on billboards in Boise, Idaho; Madison, Wisconsin; San Bernardino, California; St. Louis, Missouri, and Toledo, Ohio, as well as anti-wool ads targeting Forever 21 on buses in Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, and Louisville, Kentucky. For more information, please visit PETA.org.