Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbomb And this is a classic episode of
Speaker 1: the podcast. In this one, we explore the fine fibers
Speaker 1: and excellent animals that make cashmere possible and so pricey.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogelbaumb And if you were
Speaker 1: to ask Wendy Pia, a goat farmer in bred and Maine,
Speaker 1: to name what she likes most about her work, she'll
Speaker 1: tell you it's the individual personalities of the goats for
Speaker 1: which she cares. She said, think of the word capricious,
Speaker 1: that comes from the word caprine, which is Latin for goat.
Speaker 2: They're like that. They'll jump and dance, and they'll climb
Speaker 2: on anything. They're affectionate. Pia's particular type of goats, forty
Speaker 2: to eighty of them, depending on the year, are also
Speaker 2: some of the providers of a valuable product for humans, cashmere. Yes,
Speaker 2: in case you didn't know, your favorite, softest and probably
Speaker 2: most expensive sweater, it comes from the fur of the
Speaker 2: cashmere goat. And once you know what's involved in making
Speaker 2: a cashmere sweater, the price might not seem so exorbitant.
Speaker 2: The goats are one of at least eleven wool producing animals.
Speaker 2: The list also includes sheep, rabbits, and lama. There are
Speaker 2: several varieties of kashmir goats and a number of farms, factories,
Speaker 2: and conglomerates around the world using various production methods to
Speaker 2: make cashmere. The first goats purported to be used by
Speaker 2: humans to produce fabric to keep warm are said to
Speaker 2: be the Pashima goats. They are found in the super
Speaker 2: high altitude regions of western and northern Tibet. The goat's
Speaker 2: soft and dense underfur is built to withstand extreme temperatures
Speaker 2: as low as negative forty degrees fahrenheit or celsius. The
Speaker 2: wool from these bucks and nannies, favoured by British Royalty,
Speaker 2: eventually came to be processed in cashmere in northern India,
Speaker 2: hence the name. Various bloodlines of kashmere goats have, with
Speaker 2: human help, spread around the world. Australia has a particular
Speaker 2: breed that provides luxuriously soft threads, and North American kashmere
Speaker 2: goat are found in the colder regions of the US
Speaker 2: and Canada. North America is where pia and her husband,
Speaker 2: Peter Goff, come in. They have run Springtide farms since
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven. Pia bought goth eleven goats for his
Speaker 2: birthday in part to help clear their farmland. It has
Speaker 2: been a learning experience since then. Pia estimates its Springtide
Speaker 2: is one of two hundred to three hundred cashmere goat
Speaker 2: farms in North America. Most cashmere goat farms in the
Speaker 2: US are small in size, less than sixty goats, says Paya,
Speaker 2: who is also the president of the Kashmir Goat Association,
Speaker 2: a nonprofit whose website claims it brings together breeders, fiber artists,
Speaker 2: and others interested in these charming animals and the fiber
Speaker 2: they grow in March and April. You know, early spring
Speaker 2: is when the goats start to naturally shed their winter
Speaker 2: wool and when production begins on the farms. Few US
Speaker 2: farms shear these cashmere goats, though, because of production laws
Speaker 2: and the high cost to weed out the valuable downy undercoat. Instead,
Speaker 2: most facilities hand comb the w That means workers often
Speaker 2: the farm owners themselves sit with each animal and slowly
Speaker 2: tease out the fur that creates the fine wool for
Speaker 2: Kashmir with a dog rake up to an hour and
Speaker 2: a half per Goatpaya explained, when you look at these goats,
Speaker 2: you see the long draping fur. That's the guard hair.
Speaker 2: The Kashmere hair is under that. The crimp in Kashmere
Speaker 2: is three dimensional, and that's part of what makes Kashmir
Speaker 2: so incredibly soft. An average goat provides just three to
Speaker 2: four ounces of cashmere that's about eighty five to one
Speaker 2: hundred and ten grams. That means it typically takes about
Speaker 2: six goats to make enough fiber for just one cashmere sweater.
Speaker 2: Once the Kashmir fur is separated, samples of it are
Speaker 2: sent for quality testing to one of two labs in
Speaker 2: the US, one in Texas one in Colorado. Most legitimate
Speaker 2: US kashmere farmers have made a commitment to provide only
Speaker 2: high quality fiber, outlined in the Kashmir Goat Association standards
Speaker 2: and backed by organizations like the Kashmir and Camel Hair
Speaker 2: Manufacturer's Institute. That means consistency or uniformity in the fiber.
Speaker 2: Each follicle should be at least one point twenty five
Speaker 2: inches that's three point two centimeters in length in its
Speaker 2: relaxed or unstretched state, and no bigger than nineteen microns
Speaker 2: in diameter. If wearing wool makes you itch, that's actually
Speaker 2: because the woolf fibers have an uneven thickness. The standard
Speaker 2: thickness of wool is twenty eight microns. Cashmere is much finer.
Speaker 2: That standard of less than nineteen microns is why cashmere
Speaker 2: can feel less scratchy. Cashmere that fails to beat these
Speaker 2: standards inevitably creates quality problems like pilling in the final product,
Speaker 2: and there are plenty of examples of bad cashmere out there.
Speaker 2: While the Federal Trade Commission enforces the Wool Product Labeling
Speaker 2: Act in the United States, it gets murky on the
Speaker 2: international market. Even the FTC says quote routine testing of
Speaker 2: fiber contents by a qualified, independent testing lab is the
Speaker 2: best way to assure accurate labels. That means it's hard
Speaker 2: for consumers to determine where the cashmere there by comes
Speaker 2: from and specifically how the goats are treated. Cashmir demand
Speaker 2: is one of the problems. It reportedly far exceeds how
Speaker 2: much goats could produce every year. That means less scrupulous
Speaker 2: producers may turn to inhumane methods to produce more wool
Speaker 2: or lesser operating costs. The organization PETA has accused Chinese
Speaker 2: conglomerates of shearing the goats midwinter, when the animals need
Speaker 2: the fur to keep warm. Pias says that some farms,
Speaker 2: to save production costs, have even experimented with restricting goat's diets.
Speaker 2: But aside from compromising the animal's health, it also directly
Speaker 2: affects the quality of the cashmere. She said. If you
Speaker 2: starve your animals, the hair will get finer and shorter
Speaker 2: and more brittle. You can't spin it. They call it
Speaker 2: hunger fine. So if you wear cashmere, Pia recommends buying
Speaker 2: directly from the source or choosing very carefully. Cashmeer will
Speaker 2: consist of about one percent of a goat's total wool production.
Speaker 2: For apparel, so the fabric and those sweaters should have
Speaker 2: a price to reflect the scarcity. Even for farmers like Pia,
Speaker 2: who sells her cashmere online and at fairs and festivals,
Speaker 2: it's difficult to tell if it's the real deal. Pia
Speaker 2: herself has been fooled. She recalls a time when she
Speaker 2: found kashmere sweater at a store for less than one
Speaker 2: hundred dollars she bought it. It turned out to be
Speaker 2: a crylic. Another time, she and her husband were visited
Speaker 2: by a group of people who said they were interested
Speaker 2: in getting into the Kashmir industry. They brought with them
Speaker 2: samples of Kashmeir they had bought at trade shows in Italy.
Speaker 2: Pyah recalls they had this one shawl. It was shiny,
Speaker 2: and Kashmere isn't shiny, so we had to say to them,
Speaker 2: you know, this is really nice. I don't know what
Speaker 2: it is, but it's not Kashmir. Today's episode is based
Speaker 2: on the article why is Kashmir so Expensive? On how
Speaker 2: stuffworks dot Com, written by Jamie Allen. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com
Speaker 2: and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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