Here's some good news for lambs: Women's clothing retailer Talbots has pledged to phase out the use of merino wool from farmers who perform the mulesing mutilation (that is, they hack chunks of flesh from lambs' backsides with instruments resembling gardening shears, or they use clamps to squeeze the animals' skin so tightly that the flesh rots off). Talbots has committed to increasing the amount of wool from non-mulesed lambs every year until it completely eliminates wool from mulesed lambs in its products!

With an ever-growing list of retailers—including Gap Inc., H&M, Liz Claiborne, Perry Ellis, Hugo Boss, and Next—taking a stand against mulesing, it looks like the wool industry's cruelty to lambs is coming back to bite it in the rear. We can take a stand against mulesing, too, by putting cozy, cruelty-free clothes on our holiday wish lists.

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Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post

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Next! The British fashion giant Next, that is. The mega-retailer has announced that because the nefarious Australian wool industry has reneged on its promise to ban the mulesing mutilation (which involves hacking hunks of flesh off lambs' backsides) by 2010, Next will now only "source wool from outside Australia or from Australian sources which guarantee that mulesing with shears or clips has ceased."

"Next believes that the continuation of mulesing beyond the 2010 deadline previously self-imposed by the Australian sheep industry is unacceptable," the company announced in a statement. Next joins other leading retailers and designers—including Abercrombie & Fitch, Timberland, H&M, American Eagle, Liz Claiborne, Hugo Boss, Perry Ellis International, Coldwater Creek, and many more—that have pledged not to use wool from mulesed lambs.

You can help stop this unnecessary mutilation by encouraging Talbots (one retailer that has failed to take action) to follow in Next's footsteps and stop purchasing Australian wool.

Written by Alisa Mullins