Hollywood stars back campaign targeting wool
It’s tough enough for Kiwi farmers to get a good price for their wool, but animal rights activists aren’t making the job any easier.
Over the past year prices for crossbred fleeces have tumbled, and a lot of wool not being sold has been put into storage until the industry picks up again. The market has picked up marginally in recent sales as China, the largest buyer of the fibre, has shown a renewed interest in coarse wool after switching to finer fleeces. However a growing threat to the industry are animal rights groups such as Peta, which says it has embarked on a ‘‘new frontier’’ - to stop people from using wool. With the aid of celebrities such as Alicia Silverstone and Joaquin Phoenix, Peta is exhorting consumers especially young ones - that they should eschew the product. The campaign follows footage from sheep shearing sheds in Australia which this year helped lead to the first convictions of sheep shearers in Australia for cruelty.
Federated Farmers meat and fibre chairman Miles Anderson said the campaign was definitely concerning and it was hard to compete against that sort of ‘‘guerrilla marketing’’. ‘‘Peta has got a big budget for false information, and the bulk of the world doesn’t understand where wool comes from. Part of its motivation is to remove all animals out of farming completely.’’
He said that although most woollen sportswear was manufactured using finer fleeces, which attracted higher prices, there was a surprising amount of the coarser crossbred wool used for heavy coats and tweed. There was also research going on into creating more ‘‘apparel-friendly’’ yarn from crossbred wool. While Peta’s message would find it hard to get traction in China, the clothing often had to be sold to other countries. Anderson said the industry was preparing to counter Peta with its own social media campaign, telling stories of where wool had come from.