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Buy It For Life: Merino wool socks
(lemmy.ca)
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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Buy it for Life
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The more important question for me is, how do I avoid merino products that are the product of the most abhorrent animal abuse on the planet?
This article talks about Australia, and I don’t live there, but knowing who to trust is a difficult question in any country when it comes to merino https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/article/2022/09/25/with-merino-wool-the-question-of-animal-welfare-is-back-in-fashion_5998179_117.html
For athletic socks you ultimately run into the problem of your options are either bad or worse. Your best bet for cruelty free athletic socks is probably farm to feet reprieve socks, but those can feel a bit heavy during summer months, and still contain some wool. This is anecdotal, but the farms farm to feet used back in the day when I was visiting farms were run by people who loved their sheep and made sure the sheering process was as gentle and cut free as possible.
All of this said, the washing of wool is also costly on the environment and I'd be on the lookout for alpaca fleece socks
Thanks. I hadn’t considered the environmental aspect in this instance. I’ll keep that in mind.
No I think asking if the animals are well treated and fed good grass is a critical question. And one I made the mistake of skipping when I gave my top level answer below. I'm probably going to seek out some alpaca socks tonight
Shearing is pretty low impact on a sheep's life. Idk why whoever wrote this felt the need to dramatize it. Yah, they get nicked, but I cut my self shaving every day too.
I’ve seen the video footage. I wish they were just “nicks” that the animal experienced, although I wouldn’t want that for them either. They were bloodied and beaten. The kind of thing that an adult human would be hospitalised for.
There are good farms and bad, farmers who love their sheep, and farmers who take their resentment of their lot in life out on their animals, knowingly or unknowingly. As animal welfare activists we enter dangerous territory when we speak in absolutes. Dismissing a bad farm because its offset by a good one does nothing to help the sheep at the good one. Painting all farms with the same brush as the bad one makes people less willing to hear out what we have to say.
As far as making sure you get cruelty free animal fleece products, all I can really say, given there aren't any certifications I know anyrhing about (I'm sure they exist, I just don't know about them), I'd say bear in mind that good products should cost extra. People vehemently criticize fairphone and teracube for being expensive AND low performance but the fact is that's what happens when you try to cut slave labor out of your manufacturing pipeline.
This same concept will go for socks. Most of the BIFL sock options are ~$25. You can get way cheaper socks on alibaba. But to reduce the costs beyond those $25 you have to reduce quality and material cost. How do you reduce material cost of wool, while still being 100% specific kind of wool? Feed the sheep less well, and be less careful during shearing so you can shear more of them in less time.
I'm probably going to try later tonight to find some wool certifications and B Corps making socks
Counter intuitive as it may seem the best shearers, as in fastest, are some of the least likely to injure a sheep.
Inexperienced shearers and slow shearers are more likely to have the sheep struggle and result in a cut.
Farmers don’t ever want their sheep getting cuts because they lead to infection, infections mean dead sheep. Dead sheep are lost money.
There are good slavers and bad slavers, let's not speak in absolutes. As human welfare activists we enter dangerous territory when we speak in absolutes. 🥺
Definitely not BIFL, but I use bamboo socks nowadays. Super comfy, soft, cool and dry quickly. However, they do wear out relatively quickly, hence not BIFL material.
The pollution and horrific chemical exposures (to workers) from the production of rayon is pretty nasty. I was excited about bamboo (natural! Biodegradable!) until I started reading about it. Very disappointing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayon
Edit: bamboo “viscose” is just another name for rayon
Probably true, pretty much all clothing manufacturing is nasty, or at least specific components of them. Lots of shitry chemicals and colorings are used and without the appropriate safety measures lots of possible toxic exposures.
I should probably check where these socks are being made in, I think it's EU but not actually sure.
Paywall bypass on the linked article: https://archive.ph/bRBjE
I didn’t notice the paywall. I just used the web reader button and it displayed the entire article. Weird.