While wool, as a material, is much better than the standard issue, animal rights peoples like me have a tough time with this one. It's like buying bamboo products only to find out its been harvested from an enviornmentally senstive forest. What about cotton?

Why would "animal rights people like [you]" have a problem with wool? Its not like fur, where the animal is killed for the product... If it weren't for the practical uses for these animals, their numbers would diminish to next-to-nothing, as they certainly couldn't sustain their numbers without human assistance. If anything, you should be applauding this development.

d,

Here's my succinct answer:

1) There's more to life than numbers. The fact that there would be less animals on this planet if there weren't raised to be slaughtered or for their byproducts (ie. 10 billion animals killed each year in north america, 40 billion around the world) is pretty irrelevant. Quality of life is what matters, not numbers. Unless you think it would be a good idea for all chinese and african families to have 12 children each.

2) Wool does not kill a sheep the way an egg does not kill a chicken, but the condition in which the animals are raised are often quite as bad as for animals that are to be eaten later. In fact, they usually are eaten when they get too old (old milk cow, egg chicken and probably wool sheep).

Sorry, but I don't buy your entire "quality of life" argument. I totally agree that factory farming is out-of-control, and that living conditions for many farm animals is beyond disgusting, but if *that* is taken out of the equation (by perhaps ethical animal-farming), then I think your argument falls flat on a couple of counts.

1) The 'quality of life' that animals have in the wild, generally, sucks. Life in the wild is generally 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish & short', to co-opt a phrase. A violent end of some sort is the rule, and it isn't usually pretty. If you are going to argue that this 'natural' way is somehow superior to living a safe, clean, cared-for life, I beg to differ. Of course, I'm not a vegetarian myself, so it may come down to *that* being part of your problem.

2) There is no where in this whole chain of events that *mandates* animals be treated poorly/killed in the harvesting of milk/wool/eggs. You're taking a definite potential good (a renewable product that fills a need and doesn't kill the animal providing it) and shooting it down with an argument based on a non-necessary possibility. By your standards, you shouldn't have a problem with wool from sheep/goats treated well, raised humanely, and left to live out their natural life -- right? And, while I can maybe see that you have a slight argument based on egg-laying chickens and milk cows (both stop producing their product at some point, and there may be economic pressure to slaughter for food), I don't believe that sheep nor goats lose their fur in old age.