Horrified Influencers React to Undercover Footage From the Australian Wool Industry
“I just saw a bunch of terrible people pretty much … murder animals.”
– Ashira Paraskevas
In a new video for PETA, TikTok star Ashira, The Bachelor heartthrobs Thomas Malucelli and Felix Von Hofe, fashion influencers Jess and Stef Dadon, and model Stefania Ferrario react with tears and outrage to video footage that reveals how lambs and sheep are abused in the wool industry.
“They just, like, would cut them up and throw them and just treat them like they don’t matter,” says a crying Ashira, whose Instagram and YouTube accounts help followers navigate their mental health. “To just look at an animal and treat them like that is pretty sickening,” adds National Basketball League and reality star Hofe, who flinches as he watches the footage.
PETA entities have released dozens of videos revealing that workers hit, kick, and mutilate gentle sheep for their wool. Shearers have been filmed beating sheep with clippers, throwing them around, and standing on their necks. Footage from one investigation at a Victorian wool operation revealed a shearer painfully cutting into a heavily pregnant ewe’s prolapsed vagina before mopping up her blood with her own wool. She and her baby later died. Aside from egregious abuse in shearing sheds, sheep – who are prey animals and, like humans or any other animal, feel fear and pain – are routinely subjected to mulesing, in which swathes of flesh are cut from their buttocks, as well as castration and tail docking, often without pain relief.
“Lambs and sheep [are] being … utterly abused by shearers,” says Malucelli. “[T]hey were just bleeding out and screaming,” adds Ferrario.
“I don’t even know how anyone could watch something like that and continue to support an industry that does that to animals,” expressed Jess Dadon. Fortunately, many top retailers offer clothing made of animal-friendly, sustainable fabrics, including organic cotton, linen, Tencel, and hemp.
Most consumers would be horrified if they witnessed what really happens to sheep in the wool industry and would only ever buy items made from soft and warm plant wools. PETA’s disturbing eyewitness video footage – gathered in 116 wool operations on four continents – is impossible to deny and reveals that workers in the global wool industry beat, stamp on, kick, mutilate, and throw around terrified, gentle sheep. See for yourself:
