PETA moots 'vegan' name change to S.F. street

In a letter sent to Supervisor Hillary Ronen on Wednesday, PETA asked her and Mayor London Breed to change the name of Wool Street, a pair of blocks between Powhattan and Cortland avenues in Bernal Heights, to "Vegan Wool Street" in order to highlight alternatives to the "severe, systemic abuse" of the wool industry.

PETA offered to cover the costs of the new signs, whether the name change lasts "a week, a month" or permanently. The organization, which previously crowned San Francisco the "most vegan-friendly city" in the world, would also provide "10 fabulous vegan wool coats to distribute as you see fit."

"With this simple name change, San Francisco could remind everyone that it's easy to stay warm and be warmhearted to sheep by choosing vegan wool and other animal-free materials," Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's president, wrote in a letter to Ronen.

Ronen said she "very much" appreciated PETA's work and "creative spirit," but was "not able to take on their request" while addressing "some of the top issues my office is working on," including street conditions, homelessness, mental health and drug addiction.

PETA alleged in a statement to The Examiner that, even at farms that are marketed as making "sustainable" wool and treating sheep humanely, the organization recorded workers at wool farms "beating, stomping on, cutting open" and "slitting the throats of" sheep.

In June, PETA criticized San Francisco-based Allbirds — which purports that its sheep "live the good life" — to stop using "cruelly obtained and ecologically destructive" wool and switching fully to sustainable materials. Allbirds has said that, by the end of 2025, it's aiming to use 100% of its wool from "regenerative sources," and that its merino wool "is sustainably and ethically sourced to ensure that absolutely no harm is done to the sheep."