Our Animal Welfare


See our full animal welfare policy here.

Animal welfare is very important to us, and no animals should be harmed in the making of our products. The only animal derived product we ever used is alpaca and merino wool. This represents 2% of our products. None of our products ever contained leather, fur, skins, down or feathers, no angora or mohair.

 

NO LEATHER, NO FUR, NO SKINS, NO FEATHERS , NO ANGORA, NO MOHAIR.

 

For the 2% of animal derived products we offer we have a very strict Animal Welfare Policy:

  • Wool must be mulesing-free.

What is Mulesing?

In order to have more wool per animal, Merino sheep are commonly bred to have wrinkled skin. This creates a favorable condition for flies lay eggs in the folds of skin, and the hatched maggots can eat the sheep alive. To prevent this situation called “flystrike,” Australian ranchers perform ‘mulesing’ which includes carving huge strips of skin and flesh off the backs of un-anesthetized lambs’ legs and around their tails. The goal is to create a smooth, scarred skin that won’t harbor fly eggs, however the bloody wounds often receive flystrike before they heal.*

 elementum-animal-welfare

  • We only use wool that fulfils Responsible Wool Standard (RWS).

What is RWS ?

The Responsible Wool Standard is a voluntary standard developed by Textile Exchange and addresses the welfare of sheep and the land they graze on. Know more about RWS at https://textileexchange.org/standards/responsible-wool/ **

 

Our Position on the use of Alpaca wool 

After seeing the video released by PETA in June 2020 we have no doubt about putting on hold the use of Alpaca and Merino yarn in our garments. Alpaca and some Merino yarn were the only animal products we ever used at Elementum. And we did so in a very low percentage of our products 2%. Also we only used alpaca yarn coming from the same supplier that we choose carefully because of its commitment to sustainability and animal welfare. Our Alpaca yarn supplier has several certifications for having the best practices both for animal and human rights.

Our supplier has the following certifications : RESPONSIBLE WOOL STANDARD (RWS), GLOBAL ORGANIC TEXTILE STANDARD GOTS LETIS 2535/ 2019, ORGANIC BLENDED CONTENT STANDARD, ORGANIC 100% CONTENT STANDARD No LETIS 2535, Certified by Control Union Certifications C847906EU-01.2020, Certified by Control Union Certifications C847906NOP-01.2020, OEKO-TEX STANDARD Confidence in Textiles,12.HPE. 14517 HOHENSTEIN HTTI tested for harmful.

Our followup actions 

We are conscious about the side effect of this decision on the local communities witch depend on this ancient activity. We choose this yarn because we believed on its benefits on land and people when compared to other wool fibers.

Following the current developments on the Responsible Alpaca Standard and we will re-evaluated the use of this fibers once this standard is in practice. 

We will not waste the yarn and the garments we still have at the moment. But we will donate part of the selling of this products to an animal welfare organisation in Portugal.

We are currently searching for better wool fiber alternatives.

Know more about our Alpaca wool here.

  

* https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-clothing/wool-industry/mulesing

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulesing

**

If you still have questions about our Animal Welfare email us at contact@elementum.store we will be happy to share more information with you.