Due To Cruelty of Mulesing and Treatment of Sheep, Fashion Designer Marc Bouwer Will No Longer Use Australian Wool in His Designs

Very good for a designer to stand up. They really have a lot of clout (don’t ask me why, but they do).

The issue of mulesing is just one aspect of the cruelty of Australia towards sheep and other animals. We wrote a while back about the live animal export issue. What you’ll read is shocking. You can see the story here:
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/10/
even-after-horrors-exposed-live-animal.html

Bouwer writes:

"I recently learned from my friends at PETA how sheep are treated in Australia and am so appalled that I will be cutting all Australian wool from my future collections,"

Article:

Fashion designer bans our wool

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/
0,21985,20647828-662,00.html


Peter Mitchell

October 26, 2006 12:00am
Article from: AAP

A LEADING American fashion designer to Hollywood's A-List celebrities has slapped a ban on Australian wool.

Marc Bouwer, a favourite of Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson, has fired off a letter to Prime Minister John Howard detailing why he will no longer use Australian wool in his designs.

Bouwer said he came to the decision after talks with animal rights group, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA has waged a long-running campaign against the Australian wool industry and has lobbied for farmers to ban mulesing, a technique used to protect sheep from flystrike.

"I recently learned from my friends at PETA how sheep are treated in Australia and am so appalled that I will be cutting all Australian wool from my future collections," Bouwer wrote in the letter to Mr Howard.

"Your government's failure to take steps toward enforcing an end to these crude practices reflects poorly on Australia's standing as a wool supplier in the global fashion marketplace.

"The Australian government has been promising for years to address the painful mutilation known as mulesing, in which farmers use gardening-like shears to cut huge chunks of skin and flesh from tens of thousands of lambs' backsides each year - without painkillers."

Bouwer also criticised Australia's live export of sheep to the Middle East "where they are painfully slaughtered in ways that would be illegal in any developed country".