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