this isn’t a ‘gotcha’, i am genuinely curious: how do y’all feel about animal products – specifically fibers – that are harvested without cost to the animal?
for instance, fibers like bison and qiviut, which the animals shed annually, and which is obtained by combing. they enjoy being combed, since shedding is itchy. there are also a number of suppliers who don’t even interact with bison to get their wool, but harvest it off fences after the animals shed. i’m also thinking of ‘peace silk’, made from used cocoons after the moths leave them.
assuming these no-cruelty systems are working as expected and the animals suffer no discomfort, would you feel comfortable wearing that fiber?
Assuming that there is some kind of absolute certainty that the animals are treated perfectly well, and there is no system surrounding the whole issue that relies on harming them in any way (including e.g. painful dehorning, husbandry practices relying on fear, or the killing of calves deemed superfluous), I might be comfortable with that.
That’s a pretty big assumption, though. In theory, eggs, milk and wool can also be harvested without cost to the animal, and wool is almost exactly what you’re talking about (shearing might not be pleasant by itself, but reward-based training could easily make it so for the sheep, and facing summer heat without lots of wool is definitely in the sheep’s best interest), but a competitive industry based on wool just created sheep who need to have patches of their skin removed for health reasons (and which does that without anesthesia of any kind, for cost reasons).
Omphaloskeptomai 