Zappos to Ditch Mohair After PETA Exposé

List of Brands Banning Material Grows After Eyewitness Investigation Shows Workers Slowly Killing, Mutilating Crying Goats

For Immediate Release:
May 29, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

Las Vegas–based Zappos.com has joined the more than 100 other major retailers worldwide that have banned mohair in response to PETA’s video exposé of the mohair industry in South Africa, the source of more than 50 percent of the world’s mohair. The e-retailer giant, which is owned by Amazon, told PETA it will no longer purchase products that contain the cruelly obtained material.

PETA’s first-of-its-kind eyewitness exposé reveals that angora goat kids cried out in fear as they were shorn for the first time. Shearers—who are paid by volume, not by the hour—worked quickly and carelessly, leaving the animals cut up and bleeding. 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.

“Every single mohair sweater or scarf represents the terror, blood, and cries of gentle baby goats,” says PETA Director of Corporate Affairs Anne Brainard. “Zappos has made the compassionate decision to cut ties with the mohair industry, and PETA is calling on its parent company, Amazon, to follow suit.”

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.

In addition to Zappos, UNIQLO recently pledged to ban mohair. They are now among the dozens of retailers—including Anthropologie, Esprit, Express, Gap, H&M, Old Navy, Topshop, and Zara—that have committed to banning mohair following PETA’s exposé.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.