‘Wear Something Vegan’ Anti-Wool Ad Up Now in Atlanta

PETA Billboard Near Patagonia Store Urges People to Steer Clear of Cruelly Obtained Wool Items, Shop Vegan

For Immediate Release:
December 5, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

As part of its campaign to inspire consumers to shop vegan, PETA has placed a giant billboard in Atlanta showing a sheep’s face alongside the words “We’re Individuals. We’re Not Sweaters. Wear Something Vegan.” The strategically placed ad is just around the corner from a Patagonia store. The company began sourcing wool again after twice suspending purchases following PETA exposés of extreme cruelty to sheep. Despite repeated calls for transparency, however, the brand is refusing to divulge the new source(s) of its so-called “responsible” wool.

The ad is located at 3247 Roswell Rd. N.E. (at the intersection with E. Andrews Drive N.W.) and will be up for four weeks.

“Patagonia knows full well that sheep are shorn bloody for its wool sweaters and hats,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s billboard will encourage holiday shoppers to ditch wool in favor of cozy and humane cruelty-free clothing.”

In 2017, video footage and photographs taken at a Utah sheep-shearing operation used by Red Pine Land & Livestock, LLC—which Patagonia previously lauded as one of its “excellent partners” that met the brand’s “rigorous criteria”—revealed numerous violations of the already-lackluster “Responsible Wool Standard.” Pregnant sheep were dragged by their fleece into a trailer and dropped onto its floor. Sheep were sheared at such high speed that most were left with bloody wounds, and they were whipped on their heads, backs, and hindquarters. A lamb’s carcass was left to rot in a shed, and sheep skeletons and shotgun shells were strewn on the ground.

In addition, a 2015 exposé by PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—of wool farms that supplied Patagonia showed workers ramming knives into conscious lambs’ throats and starting to skin the animals while they were still alive and kicking.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.