Animal rights campaigners Peta are demanding an award-winning pub change its name from The Woolpack because of their concerns that the wool industry is cruel to sheep.
The campaign group, which also advocates for veganism and an end to all scientific experiments on animals, has written to The Woolpack Inn in Slad, and called for the pub to be renamed.
Peta claims the wool industry sees animals abused and exploited and is ‘problematic’. The group says wool is ‘violently taken from sheep’ and animals are subjected to being ‘treated like disposable machines’.
Owner Dan Chadwick told the Daily Mail he was unaware of cruelty in the wool industry, but his inn was named after the rich history of the Gloucestershire valley.
He said: “The whole area was built on wool and it is impossible to deny.
“A woolpack was a sack of wool, our sign depicts a mule carrying two of these sacks.
“The Woolpack Inn is a famous cultural landmark and I don’t think it would be very popular if the name was changed.
“I hate it when pubs get their names changed as it upsets the history.”
The pub was given worldwide acclaim due to poet, novelist and screenwriter Laurie Lee, who was brought up in the village and was a pivotal figure at the pub. The Woolpack was given the accolade of being in the top 50 gastropubs in the UK in December.
Stroud was built on the wool industry employed thousands of people in the area before the industrial revolution and produced some of world’s finest quality wool.
Writing to Mr Chadwick, Peta said it would be ‘happy to help contribute to the costs of rebranding’ if The Woolpack Inn does change its name. Yvonne Taylor, Vice President of Corporate Projects, said: “Sheep are thinking, feeling beings who love their families, but in the wool industry, they’re punched, kicked, and treated like disposable machines.
“PETA encourages the Woolpack Inn to to compassion and embrace a kinder future for animals and the planet as the Woolpack Inn.”
In her letter she added: “To raise sheep for their wool, swaths of land are cleared, negatively impacting biodiversity.
“Ruminant animals, sheep emit vast amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane, while toxic sheep dip and wool cleaning chemicals pollute waterways.”
