You probably already know that PETA has launched a campaign to force clothing retailer Benetton to stop using Australian wool – the local demonstration was in San Francisco on Friday, July 29, at the Benetton on 39 Stockton Street. This was a creative and powerful demonstration for people to see!

Benetton uses wool from Australia, where sheep endure a gruesome procedure called “mulesing,” in which farmers flip lambs onto their backs, restrain them with metal bars and use gardening shears to cut chunks of flesh from their rumps without any painkillers. When their wool is no longer needed, sheep are crammed by the tens of thousand onto huge, open-decked ships and transported thousands of miles in filthy, disease-ridden conditions, through all weather extremes, to countries in the Middle East and North Africa that have virtually no animal welfare standards, where their throats are slit while they are fully conscious. Sick and injured sheep, treated as mere cargo, are thrown overboard to the sharks or are ground up alive in a shipboard macerator. Although there are more effective, humane alternatives to mulesing and live export readily available today, producers have no incentive to change as long as companies like Benetton continue to purchase Australian wool. Benetton can help save sheep from this suffering simply by refusing to buy wool from Australia until mulesing and live export are ended.

We’ve sent Benetton reports detailing currently available alternatives to these horrific practices and video exposing the extreme suffering of sheep in the Australian wool industry—but the company has done nothing. To see for yourself why PETA is asking you and thousands of other activists around the world to help us boycott Benetton, click here. Please cross-post this message and this video clip so that it may reach others who are interested in helping get the word out!

For more information on this campaign, please visit UnitedCrueltyofBenetton.com.