Kashmir: Goats Scream in Pain During Cashmere Harvesting
Shocking video from the cashmere industry.
PETA Asia has released footage from a new investigation conducted on cashmere farms and in slaughterhouses in China and Mongolia — the two countries that together account for 90 percent of global cashmere production. The exposé video shows workers pinning terrified goats to the ground. The animals scream in pain as their legs are roughly twisted and their wool is torn out with sharp metal combs.
“The hair is ripped from the completely terrified goats; they are then beaten with a hammer and workers slit the goats’ throats — all just to make cashmere sweaters and scarves”
PETA President Ingrid Newkirk.
PETA is strongly urging the entire trade to follow the example of H&M and ASOS and delist cashmere. Consumers are also encouraged to leave cruelly produced cashmere products on the shelf.
Goats that bled after the procedure received neither painkillers nor veterinary care. Instead, a worker simply poured wine directly into an animal’s wound. The footage also shows what happens to goats that are no longer profitable enough. In China, workers first struck the animals on the head with a hammer to stun them, before the goats were slaughtered. Footage from Mongolia shows animals being dragged into the slaughterhouse by one leg and having their throats cut in front of their companions. It was documented that some animals continued to move for several minutes afterwards.
First Fashion Companies Ban Cashmere
H&M, the world’s second-largest clothing manufacturer, has now announced, in response to the exposé video, that it will delist “conventional” cashmere wool (the only type of cashmere H&M carries). Following discussions with PETA UK, online retailer ASOS had already removed cashmere from its range. After the company viewed the footage from the current investigation, ASOS went one step further and also removed all remaining cashmere products from its online store.
Cashmere is among the textile fibers that can have some of the worst impacts on the environment. This is because cashmere goats have large appetites and, when grazing on grasses and herbs, pull the roots out of the ground, preventing regrowth. The consequences include increasing desertification of grasslands and the formation of dangerous sandstorms so dense that they reach as far as North America.
PETA points out that the market today offers an abundance of warm and stylish vegan alternatives to cashmere — including bamboo, Tencel, hemp, modal, viscose, organic cotton, and soy cashmere, a by-product of soybean processing.
Part of PETA’s motto is: Animals are not ours to wear. The organization campaigns against speciesism — a worldview that regards humans as superior to all other living beings.
Interessengemeinschaft Wild beim Wild
The IG Wild beim Wild is a non-profit interest group dedicated to the sustainable and non-violent improvement of the human-animal relationship, with a specialization in the legal aspects of wildlife protection. One of our main concerns is to introduce a contemporary and credible wildlife management system in the cultural landscape, modeled on the canton of Geneva — without hobby hunters, but with upright wildlife wardens who truly merit the title and act in accordance with a code of honor. The monopoly on the use of force belongs in the hands of the state. The IG supports scientific methods of immunocontraception for wildlife.
