{"id":49313,"date":"2021-02-19T16:35:24","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T16:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=883d1287bd240080641908ca542900a0"},"modified":"2021-02-19T16:35:24","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T16:35:24","slug":"humane-washing-peta-calls-out-j-crews-cashmere-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/19\/humane-washing-peta-calls-out-j-crews-cashmere-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Humane Washing!\u2019 PETA Calls Out J.Crew\u2019s Cashmere Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

To assure consumers that it\u2019s ethical, J.Crew has announced its adoption of a \u201cgood\u201d cashmere standard, causing PETA to fire off a letter this morning to the company\u2019s CEO, Libby Wadle, calling out the numerous ways in which the \u201cstandard\u201d fails to protect animals and dupes potential buyers. PETA is urging the company to be honest about the suffering involved in cashmere, which is shown in videotaped investigations, and stop selling it.<\/p>\n

PETA says J.Crew realizes that consumers are unlikely to discover shocking facts about the \u201cstandard,\u201d including these: It allows farmers untrained in euthanasia to kill baby goats by inflicting blunt force trauma on them and farmers to tear out the hair of live goats with sharp, metal rakes; it doesn\u2019t require any certification of off-farm slaughter sites, which could include those similar to the slaughterhouses in which PETA Asia eyewitnesses found workers bashing goats on the head with a hammer and slitting their throats<\/a>; and it requires only 10% of \u201ccertified\u201d farms to be audited just once a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cJ.Crew is struggling financially and is apparently desperate enough to try duping customers with sham standards that don\u2019t protect animals from extreme cruelty,\u201d says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. \u201cPETA is calling on the company to drop cashmere and stop \u2018humane washing\u2019\u2014or it may find itself on the wrong end of a consumer fraud lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

PETA\u2014whose motto reads, in part, that \u201canimals are not ours to wear\u201d\u2014opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit\u00a0PETA.org<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0or follow the group on\u00a0Twitter<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0Facebook<\/a><\/strong>, or\u00a0Instagram<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

PETA\u2019s letter to Wadle follows.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Libby Wadle, CEO<\/p>\n

J.Crew Group<\/p>\n

Dear Ms. Wadle:<\/p>\n

On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide, I\u2019m writing to express deep disappointment in response to J.Crew\u2019s announcement that your company has chosen to hide behind the meaningless \u201cgood\u201d cashmere \u201cstandard,\u201d which will never<\/em> eliminate cruelty. Please reconsider, and I\u2019ll explain why we think you would benefit from doing so.<\/p>\n

J.Crew is going to be exposed as untruthful in claiming to care about animal welfare if it continues to sell cashmere, and today\u2019s (especially young) consumers will out you.<\/p>\n

The company is financially drowning, but grabbing at humane-washing catchphrases to peddle the same old cruel \u201cmaterials\u201d shows a startling lack of cultural awareness and will not save you. In the midst of a global pandemic, companies are examining their impact on society and how they can be more empathetic. This societal reckoning must include a reflection on all the deeply disturbing ways in which animals are raised and killed for their skin, wool, and hair, including cashmere.<\/p>\n

PETA has released expos\u00e9s of dozens of facilities around the world that all reveal that animals used for clothing are mutilated, abused, and even, not uncommonly, skinned alive, including on \u201csustainable\u201d and “responsible\u201d<\/strong> farms<\/a><\/strong>. Labeling items containing cashmere as \u201cgood\u201d is a transparent attempt to distract from what\u2019s actually happening to animals, and standards won\u2019t prevent most suffering, even if followed to the letter. The \u201cgood\u201d cashmere standard (GCS) is cruel for a number of reasons, including the following:<\/p>\n