After falling out of fashion, the wool industry is plotting a comeback. But, while wool’s rebranding team points to its sustainability, traceability, and high animal welfare standards, the reality behind its production is often concealed. And it is much darker than advertised.
As the industry embraces sheep clothing, animals and the planet continue to pay the price for fashion.
The where, what and how of wool production
Wool is a protein-based fiber produced by sheep, goats, alpacas, camels and other animals. It’s one of the world’s most commonly used animal fibers. Wool is incorporated into everything from socks and bedding to carpets and coats.
On average, a sheep, shorn at least once a year, will produce around 4.5 kg of wool. While in recent decades, wool has been on the decline, more than 1.2 billion sheep are still farmed each year as part of a $35+ billion industry.
China, now the world’s largest wool-producing nation, has a yearly output of over 350,000 tons, followed closely by Australia with 328,000. Meanwhile, in New Zealand and Britain, a coordinated effort is being made to stimulate an industry bounce-back.
While sheep are sheared for the sale of their wool, those in the industry say the practice also aids in parasite prevention and temperature regulation.
However, sheep didn’t always need to be sheared. They used to produce less wool and shed it naturally. Indeed, here, evolution has had a helping hand from humans.
Selective breeding throughout thousands of years has created the domesticated sheep we see today who are unable to shed their coats as wild sheep would.
Artificial insemination
This practice of selective breeding goes hand-in-hand with artificial insemination, something which, while rarely discussed, can cause pain and suffering to both rams and ewes.
For rams, electroejaculation (EE) is one of the methods used to collect their semen. It involves inserting a probe into the sheep’s anus, releasing electric shocks to cause involuntary ejaculation.
This process is distressing for rams, with research showing that it can cause increased heart rate, rectal temperature, vocalizations, and elevated cortisol (the so-called “stresshormone”).
An alternative method is a transrectal ultrasound-guided massage of the accessory sex glands, which is considered “less stressful” for rams. Artificial vaginas (AV) and manual stimulation are also used for semen collection.
Once collected, the semen is inserted into a ewe through either cervical insemination or laparoscopic insemination.
Cervical insemination involves inserting an insemination tube “as deeply as possible” into the cervical canal.
During laparoscopic insemination — used to achieve higher pregnancy rates — the ewe is restrained, and a surgical procedure is performed on the abdomen, with semen inserted directly into her uterus. As noted by Animals Australia, this can be conducted without pain relief.
However, these aren’t the only stressful and painful procedures sheep experience within the industry. Alongside invasive semen collection and insemination practices, farmed sheep are also subjected to mutilation during tail docking, castration, and shearing.
Tail docking
Tail-docking — the removal of an animal’s tail — is a common practice used across the farming industry, carried out on pigs, cows, and sheep.
There are a number of methods farmers use. They cut off the tail with a hot blade (a docking iron), use a rubber ring to cut off blood supply, causing the tail to die, decay and shed or surgical docking — removing the tail with a sharp knife.
Farmers carry out this procedure shortly after a sheep is born, usually without pain relief.
One of the main reasons farmers use this mutilation is the prevention of flystrike, which occurs when blowflies lay eggs in sheep wool. These eggs then hatch and feed on the flesh of the sheep. Sheep can die from flystrike.
According to animal charity The Human League, the crowded, “filthy” conditions of factory farms “contribute to the prevalence” of this parasitic infestation.
Alongside causing psychological distress and physical pain in animals, tail-docking can also result in rectal and vaginal prolapse, bacterial arthritis and skin cancer.
Mulesing in Australia
Mulesing, also known as live lamb cutting, is a practice Australian farmers use to prevent flystrike on Merino sheep, which are bred for excessive skin growth and higher wool production.
Here, farmers cut slices of skin from the sheep’s rear, creating smooth scar tissue that is less attractive to blowflies. This is often done without anesthetic or pain relief and doesn’t prevent flystrike elsewhere on the sheep’s body.
According to the global animal welfare organization Four Paws, Australia produces roughly 80 percent of fine merino wool used by the global apparel market. And over 80 percent of Australian wool is still sourced from sheep subjected to this practice.
While the rest of the world has banned mulesing, Australia continues to allow the practice.
Castration: routine and painful
Unlike mulesing, castration remains legal and widely practiced across the wool industry. Rams are subjected to this procedure shortly after birth, often without any form of pain relief.
Methods vary, but all are invasive and painful. One involves cutting open the lamb’s scrotum and physically pulling out the testes. Another uses a tight rubber ring to restrict blood flow, causing the testicles to eventually drop off.
A third method, known as bloodless emasculation, crushes the spermatic cords with a special tool.
Though these practices are justified by farmers as necessary for flock management or to reduce aggressive behavior, the procedures cause acute pain and distress to the animals, raising serious animal welfare concerns.
Rough handling and abuse during shearing
Shearing, often perceived as a natural part of a sheep’s life, involves rough handling and restraint, which can be a highly stressful experience for the animals.
Shearing can also injure both sheep and shearer. This is partly due to shearing’s per-sheep pay structure, which incentivizes quick work. Sheep are also often deprived of food and water before shearing to make them more docile.
Over the years, several investigations have uncovered abuse on sheep farms. An investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) collected video evidence of shearers punching, stamping on and kicking sheep.
According to Peta, this cruelty was witnessed at “every one of the 25 English farming sheds visited by two shearing contractors.”
From farm to slaughter: The end of a sheep’s life
Once sheep are no longer considered profitable — due to a decline in the quality of the wool they produce — they’re sent to slaughter for their meat, making wool a co-product of the meat industry.
On their way to slaughter, sheep can endure long journeys in cramped and hot conditions. Once a sheep has reached his destination, he is either shorn before death or has his wool removed after being killed. This wool is known as “pulled wool.”
However, this isn’t the only way that sheep die. According to Animal Aid, around one in five newborn lambs and one in 20 adult sheep die as a result of exposure to extreme weather, malnutrition and disease.
Worker exploitation and trauma
Sitting alongside the industry’s poor treatment of animals is worker exploitation and trauma. Low pay, unsafe working conditions, and psychological distress exist across the supply chain, impacting everyone from herders and shearers to abattoir workers.
There have been reports of workers being paid with drugs, poor physical conditions, and high levels of woolshed injuries — and this is just shearers.
The physical and psychological toll of working in a slaughterhouse can leave abattoir workers — often those from lower socio-economic backgrounds and migrants — battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While on live export ships, crews have been subjected to safety and health risks.
Elsewhere, accounts gathered by Collective Fashion Justice show that this distress penetrates the industry.
The non-profit details one former dairy, cattle and sheep farmer recalling “horrifying” experiences as a farmer. Another woman, previously involved in wool production, recounted her struggle “with a sense that what was happening to the sheep around her was wrong.”
Wool’s environmental price tag
In addition to its grave animal welfare implications, wool production also harms the planet.
In fact, from sky-high emissions and pollution to land clearing and water use, research shows that wool is not the sustainable material consumers have been led to believe.
According to a report by the Center for Biological Diversity and Collective Fashion Justice’s CIRCUMFAUNA Initiative, small ruminants, like sheep, are responsible for as many CO2 emissions a year as 103 million cars.
After cows, sheep also come in at second place for methane production. They belch and fart around 30 liters of the stuff a day.
And while wool is considered more ‘natural’ than other fibers, it often undergoes processes that impact its biodegradability, including dyeing. It is also increasingly blended with synthetics, according to the CIRCUMFAUNA Initiative’s report.
That’s not to mention the environmental implications of wool scouring and sheep dip, a highly toxic chemical solution used to prevent parasites in animals.
Alongside animal welfare and human health implications, sheep dip chemicals can also contaminate soil and water, with animal faecal matter also contributing to this pollution.
Is progress being made?
Although harmful and unsustainable practices and processes within the industry are slowly coming to light, the path towards progress has been bumpy.
In 2004, the Australian wool industry pledged to phase out mulesing by 2010. By 2009, the industry had U-turned, and the practice is still ongoing.
In March, Four Paws announced that 100 fashion brands — including Zara, Patagonia and Adidas — had signed a Brand Letter of Intent to cut live lamb wool from their supply chains in a move aimed at applying pressure on the industry to change.
Four Paws, Humane Society International Australia, and the Australian Animal Alliance also call for the government to step in.
However, even when standards and certifications are in place, there are still animal welfare violations.
Back in January, an investigation by PETA found that ZQ-certified wool farms in New Zealand were abusing animals. Meanwhile, last year, an investigation by the Animal Justice Project found that RSPCA-assured farms were subjecting animals to abuse.
Sheep welfare
That said, there has been some legislative progress for sheep welfare. Last year, the UK introduced legislation banning the export of live animals, including cattle, sheep, and pigs, for “slaughter and fattening” from Great Britain.
Legislation has also been passed in Australia to end live sheep exports by sea by 1 May 2028.
On the sustainability front, in recent years, terms like “regenerative wool“, “net-zero carbon wool,” and “naturally carbon negative” wool have cropped up.
While at first glance, this could signal a shift towards better practices, these words lack a clear scientific definition, are at the heart of greenwashing allegations, and contradict commercial sheep farming practices.
Elsewhere, farmers are trialing selective breeding programs to produce sheep that emit lower methane emissions and feed additives for methane mitigation, while researchers are testing methane-blocking vaccines.
However, these approaches, dubbed ‘techno-fixes’ by some, are either not yet proven at scale or are still in the research stages.
What are the alternatives to wool?
With the rise of the conscious consumer increasing demand for new materials, in recent decades, innovation has exploded.
Materials like Fibe’s potato yarn made from harvest waste, Woocoa’s hemp and coconut fiber, KD New York’s vegetable cashmere, and smartfiber’s seaweed cellulose fiber stand out as more sustainable, ethical and vegan alternatives.
Other materials, which have historically had a poor environmental record, are becoming more sustainable and ethical, too, such as organic cotton.
With a lower environmental impact than conventional cotton, organic cotton uses 91 percent less blue water and 46 percent lower global warming potential.
And when it comes to traceability, technology for enhanced supply chain transparency is also making progress. FibreTrace is one of these solutions. According to its website, this textile verification technology embeds traceable IDs into raw fibers.
While there is no silver bullet solution in the realm of alternatives, there are plenty of options beyond just wool or fossil-fuel-based textiles — although some in the industry would have you believe otherwise — and these alternatives leave sheep out of the equation.
