Animal activist group Animals Australia has released video footage and photographs it claims to have obtained at a facility in Victoria revealing hundreds of sheep being kept indoors in tiny individual pens for five years or more to produce fine wool for some of the world’s leading fashion houses.

The footage reveals sheep confined in individual barren steel and wire pens chewing on the pen railing and strands of wire, pacing repetitively and swaying. According to a press release sent out by Animals Australia today, almost 2000 sheep are confined in inhumane conditions at this single facility.

“Australians will be shocked to learn that sheep have also become victims of factory farming in this country,” Animals Australia Executive Director Ms Glenys Oogjes said in a statement released to the press.

“What more can we do to the humble sheep? They are subjected to live export and mulesing and now industries confine them for up to five years indoors in tiny pens with no quality of life, no exercise and on a minimal diet to keep their wool at the finest level possible. This is an horrendous industry that I am sure Australians will be appalled by.”

“The factory farming of sheep for ultra fine wool has been a well kept industry secret. If consumers were aware of the years of misery that goes into every expensive fashion garment from these ultra fine wool sheep, the reaction in the fashion hubs of Europe would be as it has been against mulesing. Australia’s reputation as a civilised and humane nation will take yet another blow,” concluded Ms Oogjes.

Demand for factory farmed wool is waning, with many high profile fashion houses now refusing wool produced using unethical farming practices. The world’s largest single buyer of ultra fine wool, Italian company Loro Piana, last year refused to buy wool produced by single penned sheep, and Ermenegildo Zegna (maker of fine wool suits) has ruled that fleeces from single penned sheep are no longer eligible to enter its prestigious annual awards for the finest sheep fleece.

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EthicalLiving.com.au

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