Most recently, after receiving more than 18,000 letters from PETA supporters, Anthropologie, a brand of Philadelphia-based URBN, has also announced that “due to the potential for the mistreatment of animals,” it won’t buy or produce mohair products as of March 2019 and has removed all mohair products from its website.

An eyewitness video exposé of the mohair industry in South Africa, the source of more than 50% of the world’s mohair, is a first of its kind and encompasses 12 farms visited in January and February of this year. It shows workers dragging goats by the horns and legs and lifting them off the floor by the tail, which could break their spines. Goat kids, who were being shorn for the first time, are seen crying out in fear. Afterwards, workers are shown throwing them across the floor.

In the company’s statement, H&M said it decided to permanently ban mohair from its collections. “For us it is of utmost importance that animals are treated well and we have therefore decided to permanently ban mohair,” the statement says.

“We have been in close dialogue with PETA for several years and fully agree with them on this matter. H&M group has an Animal Welfare Policy with strict requirements for all animal-deriving materials that we use in our products.” PETA is now calling on Forever 21 to follow suit.

PETA has asked law-enforcement agencies to investigate and file charges, as appropriate, for what the group believes are violations of South Africa’s Animals Protection Act, 1962. “Gentle baby goats were left bleeding and crying in pain and fear on the shearing floor, all for mohair sweaters and scarves,” commented Anne Brainard, PETA Director of Corporate Affairs. “PETA is urging shoppers to steer clear of mohair in favour of compassionate materials that no animal had to suffer and die for.”

PETA noted that many goats’ sensitive ears were mutilated with pliers, which left them screaming in pain. “Shearers, who are paid by volume, not by the hour, worked quickly and carelessly, leaving goats cut up and bleeding. Workers roughly stitched them up without giving them any pain relief,” the organisation reports.

Farmers admitted that after shearing, many goats die from exposure to the cold wind and rain – 40,000 reportedly died of exposure across South Africa in just one weekend. Unwanted goats also died in agonising ways: on one farm, a 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, according to PETA.

www.peta.org