I have spent the last three hours surfing the internet looking for ethically sourced merino wool and I have found out some interesting information about the labelling of wool.
A lot of merino wool comes from Australia and New Zealand, but this wool has come at a price. The sheep bread for this wool are susceptible to catching fly strike as there skin has lots of folds around the rear end. Fly strike is where flies lay their eggs in the soft crevasses of the skin and sometimes in the anus. This becomes very uncomfortable for the sheep and can cause infection and inhibit wool growth. Farmers often treat the sheep by shaving the rear end along with some skin taking the hair follicles away this is called mulesing. The animals are most of the time not treated with any numbing medication, which causes the animals to feel a lot of pain and discomfort and be very stressful for them. There is another method that helps fly strike and that is called Crutching. This is the removal of only the hair around the anus and sometimes the face. This however needs doing more often and therefore the cost of a shearing is added to the product.
There are organisations that have been set up to campaign for the welfare of sheep. These are PETA (People for the ethical treatment of animals), The campaign for Wool and ZQ wool. Also clothing manufactures like Patagonia, Smart wool, and Marks and Spencers have also refused to buy wool from mulesed sheep( The Guardian, Lucy Siegle,2014). These organisations will hopefully highlight these problems and make the consumer more aware.
I was looking to buy some ethically sourced merino wool for my university knit project but found it very hard to establish the source of the merino. I looked at Rowan, Patons, Clover Robin, Sirdar, Stylecraft, WYS West Yorkshire Spinners and Laxtons. WYS advertised their wool as reared, sheared and spun in Britain which made me assume the sheep were well looked after but there was no actual information on how. Laxton's also gave a nice description of where the sheep where reared in the Falkland islands but no welfare information either. Rowan where happy to talk about their sustainable credentials of their recycled Denim Revive yarn and even say where some of the Purelife British breeds come from but nothing for their merino.
All the other listed companies had no information at all on where their merino wool had come from and gave me no indication to whether the animals had been cared for responsibly.
Are customers given the information they need to make a judgment when purchasing wool?
I would like to see a standardised way of labelling across all woollen yarns not only to show animal well fair and where it has come from but also
to show if it is sustainable, recyclable and how it has been dyed.
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