Why isn’t silk vegan? The cruel reality of the industry
Silk has experienced a recent resurgence due to the popularity of silk face masks - but is silk vegan? And how is it cruel to animals? We explain how the fabric is made.
Silk is a hugely popular fabric in the fashion industry, used to make items like scarves, shirts and - in recent months - face coverings. It may come as a surprise to some that the material isn’t vegan, as the reason why isn’t well-publicised.
While there’s a common misconception that veganism denotes diet alone, there are many other lifestyle aspects that must be taken into consideration - and clothing is a notable example.
When it comes to animal products used in fashion, the notoriety surrounding fur and leather is well-known. These products come directly from murdered animals, and the cruelty behind their production is blatant and mostly understood.
But the same can’t be said for silk. While some people might be aware that vegans won’t wear or use it, there is little understanding of how it’s produced.
How is silk made and why isn’t it vegan?
Silk is a fabric that’s made from fibre spun by worms.
These so-called ‘silkworms’ are moths, but they aren’t given the chance to metamorphose when used in the silk industry.
They are instead raised on farms, and often boiled alive and killed on an unimaginable scale as part of the silk-making process.
When these farmed worms are around 35 days old, they start to spin their egg-shaped cocoons. It is at this stage that they secrete a liquid version of silk out of two glands in their heads.
After they’ve spun their cocoons, silkworms in nature would usually chew their way out of it after about 16 days and fly away as a moth - but farmed worms aren’t given this chance.
While they are still inside them, the cocoons are often dropped into boiling water, meaning the worms are boiled alive. Dropping the cocoons in the water unravels them, and long silk threads are formed as part of this process.
Other methods of killing silkworms that are routinely used include baking, steaming, freezing, and gassing.
The scale at which worms are killed to make silk is vast. It takes around 3,000 silkworms to make just one pound of silk, and it is thought that an incomprehensible 1.2 trillion are killed each year.
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Do silkworms feel pain?
The idea of boiling living beings alive is unimaginably horrific, but some people may justify the process on the highly dubious assumption that insects don’t feel pain.
While it’s true that silkworms do have different nervous systems to land mammals like humans, pigs and cows, that isn’t to say that they don’t have the capacity to feel.
Whether or not invertebrates like moths can feel in the same way we do is subject to debate, but nobody can say with anything resembling certainty that they don’t. Many experts do agree that it is possible that insects have the capacity to feel at least something resembling what we mammals would regard as pain as a subjective experience beyond nociception (an automatic reaction to negative stimuli). While there do not appear to be any studies examining silkworms and pain specifically, one study published in the journal Science Advances found that other insects such as fruit flies can experience chronic and long-lasting ‘pain’, whereas another study from the University of Cambridge and published in The Canadian Entomologist asserts that the likelihood is low.
Whatever the likelihood of pain, science has not ruled it out completely. It stands to reason then that we should err on the side of caution - why take the chance of causing pain to a living being simply for a frivolous fashion choice? Not choosing silk would mean nothing to you compared to the pain it could cause another being.
Even if it was true that silkworms couldn’t feel being boiled, they are still beings who value their lives and deserve to live as much as any other creature on this planet.
Every animal should be free to live a life free from human exploitation, and the trillions of silkworms we use for fashion deserve better.
Read more: Are avocados vegan? The myth of non-vegan fruit and vegetables debunked
Polly Foreman is a writer and digital journalist based in London. Since going vegan in 2014, Polly has stood firmly against all forms of animal oppression and exploitation. She is passionate about tackling misconceptions of veganism and challenging accepted norms about the way we use animals in this country.
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