Vegan Suits- help!

[dpark]

@Scofield, exactly what do you doubt about what I said? I'm not going to try to cite every sentence I write. If there's something specific you question, we can talk about that. But a blanket "needs citation" is both pointless and untrue. There is no question that, e.g. sheep are livestock raised for wool and slaughter. I'm not going to find a citation for that. On the other hand, if you're talking about the castration without anesthesia, Mike Rowe has talked about this and I'm sure I could dig up a supporting article or video.

@ianmichaelray, I never said that mistreating workers is better than raising sheep. I said sheep are not treated better than garment industry workers. I stand by this statement. I would far rather be a garment worker than a human treated like livestock.

[Matchbook]

Source for what? Sheep are livestock. They are raised for wool and for slaughter. They are some of the luckier livestock in that they get to graze open fields. They still get funneled into cramped pens when it's time for shearing (or slaughter), at which point they are forcibly held and sheared against their wishes (sheep do not generally line up for shearing; it's kind of traumatic and best case they don't fight it). The males are castrated without anesthesia.

If you held a bunch of humans against their will, you'd be guilty of kidnapping. If you claimed and exerted ownership over a bunch of humans, you'd be guilty of slavery. If you forced hundreds of humans into cramped pens and then assaulted them with shears, you'd be guilty of psychological torture (and maybe physical due to the occasional injuries that arise from aggressive shearing). If you castrated humans you'd definitely be guilty of physical torture, to say nothing about the lack of anesthesia.

The places we talk about having horrible work conditions are generally not as bad as all this.

What about textile factories in Bangladesh collapsing on the workers, killing them? Or instances of humiliation and physical abuse at Nike factories where the supervisors forced their workers to run laps around the factories, etc. Those same factories being chained from the outside? The list of human rights abuses go on and on. I'm not excusing animal rights abuses in the clothing industry, but at the very least, sheep aren't aware that they're being humiliated or forced to work under duress in many instances.

[Matchbook]

Also, PETA is notorious for fabricating and magnifying the scope of animal rights abuses. Does it happen? Yes. Does it happen in the scope that they claim? That's questionable.

[dpark]

If it's unfair to assume that isolated incidents of animal cruelty are representative of the industry as a whole, it's equally unfair to assume that isolated incidents of garment worker abuses are representative of the whole industry.

I feel like this whole conversation is bizarre, though. It started because someone claimed that workers are treated worse than sheep as if this would alleviate a vegan's concerns about wool. It's possible if unlikely that the workers who make your suit are beaten severely and the sheep are given daily massages. But if you're opposed to wool because you believe it to be an immoral exploitation of sheep, then both the negative treatment of workers (which seems entirely unrelated to the particular textile they are sewing) and the relatively positive treatment of these particular sheep are irrelevant. If you believe it is immoral to own and exploit livestock, then whether the livestock are treated better or worse than garment workers doesn't really matter.

[devastitis]

@dpark: just curious, you don't own any wool products?

[dpark]

@devastitis, I own a number of wool products and am not opposed to wool or other animal products.

[groomt]

What are you wearing for shoes? (Just out of curiosity, not trying to start anything.)