If you are shopping at Irvine Spectrum today and you see people wearing bloody white clothing and sheep masks, no, someone didn’t spike your mojito at Habana.
What you will be looking at through your lying eyes are activists from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who vowed Tuesday to gather outside the Forever 21 store with signs proclaiming, “#Never21” and “Sheep Suffer for Wool.”
The goal is to get shoppers to avoid the store until it agrees to stop selling wool, according to PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Sheep are beaten and mutilated for wool sweaters, coats and scarves, and Forever 21 is profiting from this cruelty to animals,” Reiman says. “PETA is calling on caring people to be kind to sheep by choosing only wool-free, vegan apparel.”
Besides the outfits and signs, protesters will treat passersby to footage on a screen from two new PETA video exposés recorded on sheep farms in Australia, the world’s largest exporter of wool.
According to PETA, “the footage shows workers beating petrified sheep in the face, deliberately mutilating them, and cutting the throats of fully conscious animals. The videos are from PETA’s 10th and 11th exposés of the global wool industry since 2014, all of which the group has shared with Forever 21—but the company has refused to act.”
The Forever 21 address is 758 Spectrum Center Dr., #303, Irvine–or look for the bloody white shirts and sheep masks.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
With all the fabulous, humane choices, why would anyone buy or wear anything made from wool? We know now how much suffering this industry causes sheep.
I only shop cruelty-free and I love knowing that no animal suffered for my clothing. Choose vegan!
Investigation after investigation has revealed that sheep are punched, kicked, sliced open, and abused in other ways for wool. It’s time to stop selling–and buying–a product that causes so much suffering.
I agree with trying to do your best to shop for shoes, clothing and even furniture that is not produced with the skins or fur of animals that are treated cruelly during their lifetime or at the end of their life when it’s sacrificed for human need. I feel going to the source where the farmers are treating the animals inhumanely would be the starting point that would be most effective and getting this abuse which is horrific to come to a stop. We can all try and do our part in supporting respect for life. The farmers that are abusing the animals while they are living as well as how they put them to death are the first ones that need to be held accountable in every way legally and morally possible. It disgusts me how most farmed animals are treated, there is no reason or excuse for abuse of any kind, period!
Lol. Nevermind the fact that vegan alternatives are more destructive to the environment, less durable, less comfortable, they melt onto your skin in the event of a fire…, They are literally the microplastics destroying the ocean. Wake up, think for yourself. Peta kills animals and steals dogs from the homeless.
Every new exposé reveals that the abuse of sheep is systemic and entrenched in the wool industry. The only kind option is to choose vegan wool.