How to Shop for Vegetarian and Vegan Yarn

     If you are a vegetarian or vegan knitter or a knitter concerned with animal welfare, you may wonder how to shop for vegetarian friendly yarn or vegan friendly yarn.  How to get what you want without pestering producers or middlemen and putting them on the defensive.  Anyone who sells yarn would love for you to tell them what you are looking for and ask if they offer anything like that.
     Be specific about what standards of animal care you would find acceptable, and just say, "Do you offer that in your products?"  Then they say just yes, they do or no, they don't.  No debating about the merits or ethics (unless you really feel the need).  Just, "This is what I am ready to pay good money for, how about it?"
     You may be interested in a previous blog post of mine about A Greener World's certification of humanely-raised fibre.  It mostly concerns wool.  Wool is not a vegan product because it comes from an animal.  The wool certified by AGW is not required to be vegetarian, that is, the flocks are not no-kill.
     You should be able to do an Internet search for wool yarn sellers who claim their yarn comes from no-kill flocks.  Juniper Moon Farm says that their Yarn and Fiber CSA products come from their own animals which "live out their natural lives on our farm" and are "never eaten."  Note that their other lines of yarn come from other flocks, flocks they don't manage and don't make any claims for.  Someone on Instagram said that Hooligan Yarns had yarn from a no-kill flock but I didn't find any claims on their site.  I did find them with Thistle Cove Farms.  Izzy Lane advertises wool clothing from the owner's no-kill flock of sheep.
     Be sure to verify for yourself what the seller means by no-kill.  The shepherd could be breeding lambs and selling them to shepherds without a no-kill policy.  The shepherd could mean that the main flock is no-kill but the resulting lambs are not.  They could mean that they still cull the flock to improve the breeding strain.  To cull a flock is to select animals that do not conform to breed standards or that do not display desirable qualities such as high fertility, and slaughter them to take them out of the gene pool.  They have breed standards not only for looks but also to ensure an animal's health; for example, to make sure you don't get animals with horns that curl too close to the jaw.
     From what I understand, it is challenging for shepherds to run a profitable flock on just the sales of wool alone.  Be prepared to support their premium product with higher prices.
     Or turn to yarn that doesn't come from animals.
     Even when buying cotton yarn, you may be indirectly participating in the meat and dairy industry because cotton seed meal is cattle feed.  Not sure about seed from flax and hemp grown for cloth.
     I like the linen yarn from Catnip Yarns and the hemp yarn from Hemp Basics.  I like Quince & Co.'s cotton yarn and linen yarn, with the Sparrow's structure more to my liking than Kestrel's.  These yarns are all considerably finer than a typical wool worsted knitting yarn or a common cotton yarn meant for knitting dish cloths.  Thus they take longer to knit with.

     You may find it helpful to read Amy R. Singer's book, No Sheep for You: knit happy with cotton, silk, linen, hemp, bamboo & other delights.  Armed with the information in the book, you can knit vegan or vegetarian.  You can commission a knitter to make you something that will meet your needs.  You can use the book to assess labels on ready-to-wear clothing.  

     Singer presents the general facts on fibre qualities, substitution, and yarn use, and she provides knitting patterns.  She doesn't talk much about the why of forgoing wool, whether your reason is an aversion to animal products, a concern for humane treatment of animals, an allergy or sensitivity, preference, or curiosity.  

     Her information on hemp production laws is out of date.  Production is now restricted and regulated in select states and prohibited in others, rather than universally prohibited in the United States as it was at the time of publication.  

     She considers bamboo yarn to be environmentally sustainable because the source material is renewable.  However, some would take issue with this since bamboo yarn is chemically processed.  

     Singer talks briefly about "peace" silk, where the silk worm gets to live out its natural life.  She does not give sources for buying it.  "Peace" silk is sometimes marketed to vegans but I don't know how suitable a vegan would find it for their needs if they do not use animal products, period.  Singer makes the distinction between Tussah silk, from the breed, and "peace" silk, from a process.  I don't think you can expect all Tussah silk to be "peace" silk, only what is labeled as such.  Singer points out that while Tussah silk worms are not hand-fed and kept inside like Bombyx silk worms, they are still farmed.
     What about claims that genetically-modified cotton kills butterflies?  I've heard those claims.  When I traced back to the study, I found that the research was done on BT corn, not BT cotton.  I'm not sure whether the same thing happens with BT cotton or if there were subsequent studies done on cotton.
     I am not vegetarian or vegan myself.  But I believe strongly in accurate informative labels (truth in advertising), an educated buying public, and voting with your dollars for what you want in the world.