What Is the Responsible Wool Standard (RWS)?
The Responsible Wool Standard is a voluntary global standard developed by Textile Exchange. It verifies two things at the farm level: that sheep are treated according to the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, and that the land they graze is managed progressively. It also covers social welfare, working conditions, and worker health and safety.
Farms are certified against the standard's Animal Welfare and Land Management modules by an accredited third-party certification body, not by Textile Exchange itself, which writes and owns the standard. Control Union certifies Avocado's wool.
The certificate. Our organic wool is certified to the Responsible Wool Standard under Textile Exchange's Responsible Animal Fibers program. The farming certificate is held by our supplier, Agrestal Organic Living India Private Limited, issued by Control Union — scope certificate CU879574RWS-2024-00131830, current version CU879574RWS-2026-00053827, valid through December 5, 2027. It covers communal farming of 100% responsible greasy wool and can be looked up in the Textile Exchange public registry under TE ID TE-00112639.
The wool comes from Gaddi sheep, an indigenous Himalayan breed, grazing across Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in northern India — 325,520 sheep on 38,265 hectares, roughly 382 square kilometers of high-altitude pasture. Agrestal is our exclusive wool supplier, and Avocado holds a minority ownership stake in it through its investment entity, Natural Bedding Components, LLC.
Our 100% RWS Wool certificate: CU 1126022.
The Five Freedoms
RWS requires certified farms to provide freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury, and disease; freedom to express normal behavior; and freedom from fear and distress. Compliance is verified by on-site audit, renewed annually.
Mulesing is prohibited
Mulesing is the removal of skin folds from a sheep's hindquarters to reduce flystrike, performed without anesthetic. It is practiced primarily on Merino sheep, whose wrinkled skin around the tail traps moisture and attracts blowflies.
RWS prohibits mulesing outright across every certified farm. There is no exemption and no phase-in. It is one of the clearest lines the standard draws, and it is a substantive reason to look for RWS rather than for an unnamed "ethically sourced" claim.
Avocado's sheep are Gaddi, an indigenous Himalayan breed — not Merino, and without the skin conformation the practice addresses. Mulesing is not performed anywhere in our supply chain.
Certified wool has to stay certified through the supply chain
Certified fiber at the farm and certified fiber in a finished product are only the same fiber if the steps between them are documented. Downstream stages — scouring, processing, manufacturing — are certified to Content Claim Standard requirements, and each shipment must be accompanied by a transaction certificate so volumes can be reconciled from farm to finished goods.
A product cannot carry the RWS claim on partial content
To be labeled RWS, a product must contain 100% RWS-certified wool. Partial content does not qualify. Every Avocado mattress that contains wool contains 100% RWS-certified wool.
What RWS does not verify
RWS is not an organic certification and does not claim to be. It says nothing about organic livestock status, pasture inputs, or organic feed. Those are certified separately — in our case under the Canada Organic Regime, by Sustainable Agriculture Promotion Society.
RWS is also not a processing standard. GOTS covers what chemicals may be used to clean and prepare the fiber, and how wastewater is handled.
Three standards, three different scopes. A brand can hold one and not the others.
How to verify an RWS claim
Ask for the scope certificate number and the name of the certification body, then check it against that body's public registry. A valid certificate shows the certified entity, scope, product, and validity period. If a brand cannot supply a number that resolves to a registry entry, the claim can't be independently confirmed.
A note on what's changing
Textile Exchange is consolidating its standards into a single Materials Matter Standard, and RWS is expected to be integrated into that framework. We will update this article as the transition is finalized.
For where our wool comes from, how it's processed, and our full certification details, see our organic wool page.
