New Look Confirms: No Cruelly Produced Australian Wool in Stores

After reviewing video footage from PETA showing the cruel treatment of lambs and sheep at the hands of the Australian wool industry, prestigious retailer New Look, based in London, England, has taken pains to track the source of its wool and has now given an assurance that it does not knowingly purchase Australian wool from producers who practice mulesing and who export live older sheep by sea.

New Look is a $1 billion company with 700 stores in the U.K. and France (under the name Mim). International retailer Abercrombie & Fitch was the first major company to join the boycott in October 2004.

PETA wants the Australian government to ban sheep exports—during which tens of thousands of sheep die while being shipped aboard open-decked ships in all weather extremes—and to end “mulesing,” an atrociously cruel mutilation condemned by the RSPCA, in which farmers cut flesh from lambs’ hindquarters with a pair of gardening shears and without painkillers in a crude attempt to reduce flystrike. Although more sophisticated and humane methods exist—the Australian wool industry has rejected alternative humane flystrike-prevention methods already in use by about 20 percent of Australian sheep farmers and prefers to stick with cheap and painful mulesing. Australian sheep also die by the tens of thousands by being crammed aboard open-decked ships for a terrifying journey through all weather extremes to slaughter in the Middle East. Sick and injured sheep, treated as cargo, are thrown overboard to the sharks or ground up alive in mincing machines. Those who survive the journey have their throats slit while they are still fully conscious. The wool industry must adopt existing alternatives to these cruel and unethical methods.

Phil Wrigley, CEO
New Look
New Look House
Weymouth, Dorset DT3 5HJ
UNITED KINGDOM