Forever 21 Targeted Over Shearing Cruelty

PETA Launches #Never21 Billboard Campaign to Alert Consumers to Sheep Abuse

For Immediate Release:
September 5, 2019

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Denver –

PETA has videotaped the cruelty that goes on, out of sight, inside sheep-shearing sheds around the world and revealed that frightened lambs and sheep are hit in the face with metal clippers, they’re stomped on, their heads are smashed into the floor, and they’re subjected to other outrageous acts of abuse that today’s conscientious consumers would not sanction. Despite being asked to switch to wool-free options that are lighter weight and fashionable, Forever 21 has refused to stop purchasing and selling wool, compelling PETA to put up a billboard near two of the chain’s stores in Denver proclaiming, “Don’t Let Forever 21 Pull the Wool Over Your Eyes. Wool Is Just as Cruel as Fur. #Never21.”

Recent PETA video exposés recorded on sheep farms in Australia—the world’s top exporter of wool—show a farm manager carving swaths of flesh from lambs’ hindquarters as the animals thrash and cry and one worker bragging, “I hit one [sheep] so hard I knocked it out …. F**ked it under the jaw a bit too hard.” The videos are PETA’s 10^th and 11^th exposés of the global wool industry since 2014, all of which the group has shared with Forever 21—but the company has refused to take action.

“Today’s consumers deserve to know that Forever 21 is profiting from an industry in which gentle sheep are beaten, mutilated, terrorized, and even killed for wool,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s ad encourages shoppers to steer clear of Forever 21 until the company agrees to act compassionately and stock only stylish vegan knits.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals.

The billboard is located at 1336 E. 17^th Ave. (at the southeast corner of E. 17^th Avenue and Humboldt Street). For more information, please visit PETA.org.