Tell HOME DEPOT to Stop Selling Lambswool Dusters!

When I discovered "Natural Lambswool Dusters" hanging on an end-cap at my local Home Depot, I was both shocked and very upset. With all the companies, world-wide, that have stopped selling merchandise made with/from animal products, Home Depot has not followed suit. Instead, they purchase wool dusters from Wool Shop, who purchases Australian lambswool products from Indonesia.

Sheep are gentle individuals who, like all animals, feel pain, fear, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. But because there’s a market for their fleece and skins, they are treated as nothing more than mere wool-producing machines. Shearers are usually paid by volume -- not by the hour -- which encourages fast, reckless work without any regard for the welfare of the sheep. This hasty and careless shearing leads to frequent injuries, and workers use a needle and thread to sew the worst wounds shut -- without any pain relief. Strips of skin -- and even teats, tails, and ears -- are often cut or ripped off during shearing.

A PETA investigation of more than 30 shearing sheds in the U.S. and Australia uncovered rampant abuse. Shearers were caught punching, kicking, and stomping on sheep, in addition to hitting them in the face with electric clippers, and standing on their heads, necks, and hind limbs. One shearer was seen beating a lamb in the head with a hammer, and another even used a sheep’s body to wipe the sheep’s own urine off the floor. And, yet another shearer repeatedly twisted and bent a sheep’s neck, breaking it.

In Australia, where more than 50-percent of the world’s merino wool originates -- which is used in products ranging from clothing to carpets to cleaning supplies -- lambs are forced to endure a gruesome procedure called “mulesing,” in which huge chunks of skin are cut from the animals’ backsides, often without any painkillers.

Within weeks of birth, lambs’ ears are hole-punched, their tails are chopped off, and the males are castrated without any painkillers. Male lambs are castrated when they are between 2 and 8 weeks old, either by making an incision and cutting their testicles out, or with a rubber ring used to cut off blood supply -- one of the most painful methods of castration possible. When the lambs’ testicles don’t fall off as expected, shearers often just cut them off with clippers. Every year, hundreds of lambs die before the age of 8 weeks from exposure or starvation, and mature sheep die every year from disease, lack of shelter, and neglect.

Unwanted Australian sheep are shipped to the Middle East on crowded multilevel ships. These voyages, which can last weeks, go to countries where animal welfare standards are non-existent. The suffering sheep are dragged off the ships, loaded onto trucks, and dragged by their ears and legs to slaughterhouses -- which are often unregulated -- where their throats are slit while they’re still conscious.

No amount of “fluff” can hide the fact that anyone who buys and/or sells wool supports a very cruel and bloody industry! There are plenty of durable, functional, popular, and fashionable SYNTHETIC materials available that are not made from wool, animal skins, feathers, or any other animal products.

So, unless and until Home Depot stops selling products consisting of wool (or any other animal products), we will not be shopping in any of your stores, and will encourage our families, friends, and everyone else we come in contact with, to do the same. Please join the millions of people and companies all over the world who know that compassion is what sells – not cruelty!