Victory! Columbia Sportswear Company Bans Mohair After PETA Exposé

Retailer Joins Growing List of Mohair-Banning Brands After Exposé Showed Workers Mutilating, Killing Goats

For Immediate Release:
June 27, 2018

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Following talks with PETA, Portland-based retailer Columbia Sportswear Company has officially banned mohair, joining the nearly 190 other brands worldwide that have pledged to go mohair-free.

The move from the company—which has also banned angora wool and fur from its brands Columbia, Mountain Hardwear, prAna, and SOREL—comes in response to PETA’s video exposé of the mohair industry in South Africa, the source of more than 50 percent of the world’s mohair. In thanks, PETA is sending the compassionate company a box of delicious vegan chocolates.

PETA’s first-of-its-kind exposé shows that shearers—who are paid by volume, not by the hour—worked quickly and carelessly, leaving angora goats with gaping wounds. Workers roughly stitched them up without giving them any pain relief. And unwanted goats died in agonizing ways: One worker slowly cut the throats of fully conscious ones 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.

“PETA’s exposé pulled back the curtain on the gentle baby goats who cried out in fear as they were sheared for mohair sweaters and scarves,” says PETA Director of Corporate Affairs Anne Brainard. “Columbia Sportswear Company has joined the quickly growing list of top retailers that recognize that today’s shoppers don’t support cruelty to animals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—has asked law-enforcement agencies in South Africa to investigate and file charges, as appropriate, for potential violations of that country’s Animals Protection Act, 1962. An investigation is underway.

Other brands that have banned mohair include ASOS, Forever 21, Gap, H&M, Overstock.com, Topshop, UNIQLO, Zappos.com, and Zara, among dozens of others.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.