Wool often tends to be overlooked by many animal advocates because its cultivation does not necessitate the death of the animal, unlike meat production or leather, for example. However, the cultivation of wool is far from the pastoral idyll one might imagine.

Wool production is an industry. Like any other branch of animal agriculture, it thrives by commodifying animals and objectifying them as resources for human consumption. It converts sentient creatures into units of production, thereby consigning them to brief lives of neglect, abuse, and captivity in the service of increased profit margins.

Moreover, just as the dairy industry implicitly supports the meat industry by supplying it with veal calves and female cows whose milk production levels have dropped, wool funnels sheep who are no longer producing profitable levels of wool into the meat industry, often through live export which entails its own unique set of abhorrent practices. Ultimately, every shorn sheep will be brought to slaughter.

One might also mistakenly believe that a sheep needs to be shorn, but the reality is more complicated. Undomesticated sheep produce only the amount of wool that they need to survive in their climate. Again, as we have bred chickens and pigs to grow so large that their legs can no longer support them, we have used genetic engineering to manipulate the sheep’s wool production to meet our designs.

Today’s domesticated sheep will overproduce wool in the abundance that is required to support the industry. We have, in effect, turned the sheep’s body against the sheep. Shearing, which is, in itself, a brutal process in which frightened animals are forced into submission, occurs early in the spring, which leaves the sheep vulnerable to exposure. Deleterious breeding is certainly not the only way in which the sheep’s body is assaulted to further human interests.

About half of the world’s Merino wool comes from Australia, where the practice of ‘mulesing’ is ubiquitous. Because of forced, unnatural breeding practices, these sheep have wrinkled skin in order to increase wool production. This wrinkled skin also accrues excess moisture, which in turn attracts flies. The flies lay eggs in the skin folds and resulting maggots begin to consume the sheep’s skin in the extremely painful condition known as flystrike. To prevent this from occurring (or rather, to maintain their product using the most cost-effective means at their disposal) the wool industry cuts off the skin and flesh from around a lamb’s hindquarters, generally without anesthesia.

Unlike some animal ingredients, leather can usually be spotted quickly, but since it’s also so ubiquitous it can just as easily be overlooked.  You’ll find leather in clothing and personal accessory items, like shoes, belts, gloves, and handbags.  It can show up unexpectedly on some of these items, such as in the case of leather buckles on a canvas messenger bag, or a leather tag on a pair of denim jeans. Leather is also frequently used for upholstery, so you’ll likely find it in furniture and car seats as well.

Since animal use is the dominant paradigm throughout the world, vegans generally cannot make assumptions about the products we use.  It can be surprising and upsetting to learn how much of our material culture is literally built from the bodies of animals and, while being a more active and vigilant consumer can seem daunting for new vegans, when weighed against the death and suffering of billions of animals, it is surely the least we can do.

By far, most leather is sourced from cows. Leather production shares a common misconception with dairy: that it is incidental to the meat industry.  In other words, it is often assumed that leather is a mere byproduct of meat and that purchasing and wearing leather does not contribute to a brutal industry and a profoundly immoral institution.  This is a false assumption. Not only is leather highly profitable for the meat industry (as explained below), much of the leather sold worldwide comes from animals killed primarily for their skins.

Unlike fur, which has become highly controversial thanks to the now widespread awareness about the cruelty involved in its production, the use of leather (which is also the skin of an animal) continues to be overlooked, even by those who identify as vegan and would never consider buying or wearing fur.

As with dairy, leather and meat are mutually sustaining industries. In economic terms, a cow’s skin is roughly 10% of her total “value,” which actually makes the skin the most profitable portion of the cow’s body. Three pounds of leather, for example, is worth considerably more than three pounds of flesh.  Leather helps make the meat industry—and animal farming—profitable.

Many people are already familiar with the brutality involved in factory farming, but these industry standards only compound the immorality of killing an animal for our completely unnecessary and frivolous purposes. Leather is also sourced from  other animals in lesser quantities. Pigs, goats, sheep and lambs, cats and dogs, deer, elk, buffalo, oxen, yaks, horses, kangaroos, snakes, alligators, elephants, ostriches, fishes, sharks, and even stingrays are all among the victims of the leather industry. The products that result from their deaths are generally used for clothing and will usually advertise themselves, since the “exotic” source of material is considered desirable. Slink, an exceptionally soft form of leather that is one of the most highly prized, is actually made from the skin of unborn calves.

From blouses to sarongs, suits to ties, and lingerie to pajamas, silk is still widely used by the textile industry, finding its way into sheets and pillowcases as well as handkerchiefs and headscarves. What some people may not be aware of, however, are the less-obvious places silk shows up, including parachutes, bicycle tire casing, cigar bands, replacement heart valves, and sutures for surgery.

We tend to associate silk with the silkworm due to the fact that, in its production, silkworms are killed by the hundreds of millions every year. However, silk is a fiber naturally produced by a number of different insects, including spiders, whose silk reserves have also been exploited in medical and military experiments.

Although synthetic silks made from lyocell (a type of cellulose fiber) can be difficult to distinguish from the real thing, sadly, the archaic practice of using silk from insects remains as common as ever.

Just prior to their metamorphosis into moths, Bombyx mori pupae spin silk fibers to weave their cocoons. In nature, the moth chews his or her way out of the cocoon once the transformation is complete. But in the fabric industry, silk is mass produced through the breeding and domestication of silkworms on what are essentially moth factory farms. When the caterpillars enter the pupa stage of their development, their cocoons are plunged into boiling water. This kills the silkworms and begins to unravel the longer fibers.

Approximately 15 silkworms are killed to produce a single gram of silk. Although it is very occasionally harvested after the moth has broken free, the strands are considerably shorter and the finished product is not commercially viable on a large scale.

There are other methods of producing silk that do not result in the death of the insect; however, there are still ethical issues to be considered. “Ahimsa silk,” for example, is made from the cocoon of the Bombyx mori moth after the moth has chewed through and discarded it. The silkworms used in this method of production are still domesticated and, just like other domesticated farmed animals, are bred for the purposes of production at the cost of their own health and well-being. The adult moths cannot fly because their bodies are too large and the adult males cannot eat due to underdeveloped mouth parts. The same would be true of moths in large commercial operations, but they are killed before reaching adulthood.