British wool

Merino wool Shrub - really? So you advocate mulesing? How wicked!

All the daft arguments above refer to the very unnatural creature, bred through the generations - to suffer and provide a fibre we just don't need. Time to stop breeding the poor disabled things.

www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-clothing/wool-industry/

We have plant fibres in variety, no need for wool or man made at all.

What I can't understand is how people can turn a blind eye to all the cruelty - yet call themselves animal lovers, even keep and spoil pets.

It may be 'traditional' but it's time to stop, like bear baiting and cock fighting.

Utter nonsense

I’m afraid Fennel that Woolovers source their wool from many different countries. I know this because I wrote to them some time ago to ask about their use of Australian merino wool and their views on mulesing. To their credit, they replied honestly, saying the following:

Unfortunately, we have never had the resource to be able to go that deep into checking out the farmers ourselves, but all the yarns we use come from reputable and widely used mills in the industry who have their own policy regarding animal welfare.

So in other words they leave the animal welfare question up to individual farmers and presumably the regulations in each country. I did ask if they would consider paying the premium for non-mulesed wool, as other more ethical manufacturers have done, but they did not reply.

We are talking about the British wool industry, Hetty, not the large flocks kept on enormous acreages in other countries, where daily inspection of every sheep for fly-strike and to trim away wool that could get mucky at their backsides (attracting flies) is impossible, so other measures are resorted to.

Mulesing is not practised in the UK.
" . . it cannot be stated clearly enough that a procedure known as mulesing is never used for sheep in the UK. Also cross breeds of sheep in the UK known as 'mules' have nothing at all to do with the mulesing procedure. In sheep farming, the term Mule is used to refer to a cross between a lowland ram (usually a Bluefaced Leicester) and a purebred upland (or hill) ewe."

A law passed in NZ makes it illegal.

In Victoria, from July 1 2020, it became a legal requirement for wool growers to administer pain relief prior to mulesing. NSW hopes to follow suit and aims to do more with its revisions to the POCTA Act, which if followed through with could eradicate mulesing as a practice from 2023. As a start, the Animal Justice Party has introduced legislation to ban mulesing in NSW by 2022. I don't know what alternative method will be used to counter the horrible effects of flystrike - where maggots from eggs laid in the mucky backsides of sheep eat into their living flesh. This doesn't just happen to domesticated sheep!

Elegran, I expect Australian farmers will have to do whatever New Zealand farmers do to prevent fly strike. There are already some Australian farmers who do not use mulesing, although they are very much the minority.

You are right.

British wool, Elegran? Are you saying it's cruelty-free here? How very naive - watch this:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sheep-shearing-wool-peta-farms-rspca-action-punched-beaten-killed-a8508221.html

Grammaretto Just wondered where about in cumbria. I was born and bred in that part of the world, but not lived there for many years.

I am saying that mulesing is not practised in Britain. I will also say that it is impossible to state that no-one at all ever illtreats animals, or treats them carelessly.

But I will also say that condemning a whole industry and everyone in it because it isn't 110% free from uncaring operators is using a blunt instrument as a scalpel to remove animal cruelty. Abuse should be prosecuted whenever and wherever it occurs.

Another point - we cannot exist purely on manmade, petrol-based or chemical-based substances which take large amounts of other resources (power, water, minerals,) to manufacture and then hang around for centuries without rotting into humus. The surface of the earth would end up covered in a thick layer of unbiodegradable debris, through which no vegetation would grow and no animals inhabit.

We need to use materials which return to the earth to become other usable substances.

I meant to add to Abuse should be prosecuted whenever and wherever it occurs. that The abuse should be removed from the industry, not that the industry should be automatically removed from existing.

We have plant fibres in variety, no need for wool or man made at all.

Facts and figures, then, please Hetty

My organically and sustainably produced viscose sweaters, bought just last year, worn about 3 times each, have proved to be disastrous.
I've had to replace them with wool ones which I hope will last.

Skallagrigg Woolfest is held at Cockermouth in the Mitchells Lakeland Livestock Centre. a couple of miles outside the town.
It is a lovely part of the world.

Callistemon "To create viscose, and make it stand up to regular wearing and washing, it must be chemically treated. The recycled wood pulp is treated with chemicals such as caustic soda, ammonia, acetone, and sulphuric acid. We therefore have a fabric, which comes from a natural and sustainable source, but that is made with chemicals."

Oh, nice!

I thought I was saving the planet. ?
Despite careful washing, both jumpers have shrunk upwards, the sleeves were far too long but are now bracelet length and instead of being top of thigh length they are now waist length. I even pulled them down hard when they were damp.

?

There are actually two methods of extracting fabric from the bamboo plant. The first is mechanical. This involves crushing the plants into a mush, using natural enzymes to break it down and then combing out the fibres and spinning them into a yarn. The fabric produced this way resembles linen (indeed, it is often called bamboo linen). This method does have some environmental drawbacks but could potentially be sustainable. However, because it is labour-intensive, it's expensive, and the fabric produced is not soft enough to be used in the bamboo fibre underwear that is increasingly popular.

The second method is chemical. The plants are cooked in a cocktail of chemical solvents - primarily sodium hydroxide (lye, or caustic soda, as it's more commonly known) and carbon disulfide. Both are known to be harmful to human health, and sodium hydroxide can harm aquatic life when released into the water supply. Many companies using bamboo fabrics claim that because these are only used in a small part of the production process, they are not significant. But a factory producing tonnes of fabric a year will expose both workers and the wider environment to a vast amount of such chemicals.

Sulphuric acid is also involved The viscose bamboo cellulose is forced through spinneret nozzles into a large container of dilute sulphuric acid solution that works to harden viscose bamboo cellulose sodium xanthogenate and reconverts it into bamboo cellulose fiber threads that are spun into the yarns to be woven into a fabric.

The lesson, therefore, is that until the production process becomes both more transparent and more sustainable, it might be best to keep a watchful eye on bamboo. As Sarah Compson says: "We'd be happy to certify bamboo at the Soil Association if someone could come up with a sustainable method that goes all through the supply chain, not just the growing."
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/13/bamboo.fabric
owlcation.com/stem/Bamboo-Fiber-The-Manufacturing-Process-and-How-to-Care-for-Bamboo-Fabrics

It all sounds so lovely and eco-friendly, doesn't it, until you delve into the processes involved in its production.

A friend buys her fleeces from farmers she knows, washes and picks them herself, dyes them with natural dyes, spins them, then knits her own unique jumpers.
I've met some of the sheep and alpacas and they seem very happy.

That's far more sustainable.
Perhaps we should all be doing that. It might take me rather a long time to make a carpet though.

British Wool (still based in Bradford for England) is definitely still going. I know they have cut back on the number of people working for them in the offices over the last few years and now they are closing some grading sites. I expect the story is about this rather than closing altogether.

British wool is traditionally rougher than say, merino, and so it's been losing market share in clothing manufacture. It's still used in carpets though as pretty durable.

Callistemon Viscose is made from ordinary wood pulp plus chemicals. I googled bamboo as another example of natural fibre - turns out that uses some vicious chemicals too.

Linen is natural, but needs some intensive treatment to make it into usable fibre. Cotton too is less environmentally sound than it seems. China is manufacturing and using fibres from various plant sources, but are not always transparent about the side effects of the processes.

I am off to bed now, but tomorrow I'll do a bit more looking for how fibres are processed (unless something more urgent turns up)

I know that most cotton produced goes through harsh chemical processes.

The one thing these processes use, too, are vast amounts of water.

And that water ends up in watercourses, including the chemicals. An amateur can prepare a woollen fleece straight from the shearer using only plain water, perhaps adding a little soap to remove the worst dirt, and end up with a liquid that makes an excellent garden fertiliser.
The spun wool can either be washed before knitting or weaving it, or after it has been made into a garment, in soap or a gentle detergent (and that water too can be poured around the roses). No more pollutant than the usual laundering.