I had never really thought about it until last weekend. But as soon as my friend asked if I had heard about the deal with cheap angora from China, I felt a familiar sinking sensation.
Angora comes from a particular breed of rabbit (a very fluffy breed). One reason why angora is so expensive is that it is not shorn or clipped off the rabbits the way that sheep's wool is. You have to comb it off the rabbit by hand, which is a very time consuming and labor intensive practice.
Recently there have been a lot of affordable angora blend yarns on the market, most of which come from China. I have used a few myself, and they seemed pretty nice. (So soft!)
Unfortunately, there is a cost to this cheap yarn. Do you really want to know? Probably not. Let's just say that the rabbits are not particularly thrilled by the process. And that the reason that Chinese angora is so much cheaper than American angora is that it would be literally against federal law for American producers to treat their animals in such an inhumane fashion. And that's coming from a country where battery cages are still legal for egg-producing hens, so you know this is a pretty serious situation.
Alas, cheap Chinese angora has gone on my "no buy" list, along with cheap cashmere. (The production of ultra-cheap cashmere is basically destroying the Mongolian desert, which was an incredibly fragile ecosystem to begin with.)
Luckily, there are still a lot of great sources for angora yarn here in the United States. Look for domestic small farms and spinners, like Windsor Farms Rabbitry (which is run by the vice president of the International Association of German Rabbit Breeders), or Cozy Rabbit Farm.
Image courtesy Flickr/Sir Frog
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