PETA's Guide to Compassionate Living

Leave It on the Rack While public opinion polls consistently find that the majority of people oppose wearing fur, many kind people unwittingly support horrific cruelty to sensitive animals by choosing other animal skins. At Chinese facilities, dogs are bludgeoned and skinned, and their skin is turned into dress gloves, work gloves, and other items. Most leather comes from India and Bangladesh, where each year, millions of gentle cows are beaten

Hands Off!

mercilessly in forced “death marches” over vast distances to grisly abattoirs, where they’re killed right in front of each other. Angora rabbits’ fur

is painfully ripped out on farms in China. Down comes from birds on foie gras factory farms but it is also obtained from live ducks and geese who are pinned down while fistfuls of their feathers are torn out. Workers, who are paid by volume, not by the hour, rush to defeather as many birds as possible, tearing open their delicate skin. Then they sew up the gaping wounds using a needle and thread but no painkillers. Wool Is Shear Cruelty Sheep are gentle individuals who, like all animals, feel pain, fear, and loneliness. But the wool industry treats them as nothing more than wool-producing machines and offers little in the way of respect or compassion. In nature, sheep grow only as much wool as they need to keep warm, and they naturally shed some of their fleece each year. Only sheep who have been selectively bred by the wool industry to grow unnaturally heavy coats, such as merinos, suffer if they’re not shorn each year. Sad Lives When lambs are just a few weeks old, their tails are cut off, a hole is punched through their ear, and males are castrated. Farmers use knives, hot irons, or tight clamps to sever parts of their bodies, often without painkillers. Shocking numbers of lambs die from exposure or starvation before they’re even 8 weeks old. But those who do survive cannot be considered lucky. From the ordeal of the shearing shed to the hot summer months when they often collapse from heat exhaustion because of their unnaturally heavy wool, they lead harsh and difficult lives.

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Hands Off Dog-Leather Gloves Sensitive dogs, cats, cows, seals, sheep, rabbits, and other animals are skinned – often alive – for fashion. Sparing these animals’ lives is as easy as choosing a cruelty-free product over an animal-derived one when you’re shopping. This guide will help you know what to wear, where to shop, and what to avoid so that you can help make compassion the fashion. Cruelty-Free Fashion

Much more free information about cruelty-free fashion is available at

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