Is wearing wool sweaters unethical now? I can’t keep up...

Quintin McEwen spotted the tag on a Lucky Brand men’s polyester sweater and decided he had had enough. “Shearless Fleece,” it read next to a picture of a sheep heavy with wool. “Not a single sheep was sheared in the making of this garment.”

The sixth-generation sheep farmer in Monkton, Ontario, logged on to his farm’s Facebook page to lash out at Lucky. Not only is shearing not inhumane, he wrote, it helps sheep fend off disease and move around more comfortably. “I am absolutely shocked by your blatant disregard for my industry,” Mr. McEwen wrote in the post, eliciting more than 1,000 comments.

News of the perceived offense spread quickly through a growing and increasingly snippy group of knitters, wool enthusiasts and sheep farmers who say wool criticism is social activism gone awry. Wool proponents say they have been unfairly lumped in with crocodile hunters and mink farmers by overzealous do-gooders who fundamentally misunderstand what goes into sheep farming, not to mention the superior properties of wool.

To the dismay of wool proponents who tout their ecofriendly credentials, they have landed on the wrong side of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The animalrights group recently erected billboards in Boston and New York’s Times Square that display a nude picture of actress Alicia Silverstone with the phrase “Leave Wool Behind” across her backside.

Lucky Brand stopped using the antiwool tag after speaking with some critics, said Chief Executive Carlos Alberini. “It was never our intention to offend anyone with this hangtag,” he said.

After clothing retailer Duluth Trading Co. recently advertised a fleece-lined shirt with the tagline, “No smelly animal fur here, just soft, furnace- warm 200-gram polyester fleece,” retribution was swift.

“I beg of you, please stop throwing wool under the bus,” Ms. Parkes wrote in an Instagram post. “You know as well as I do that commercial wool has no scent at all, and that it comes from a living animal who goes on living a very good life,” said the 49-year-old who lives in Portland, Maine.

The company has taken antiwool statements out of future catalogs after hearing concerns, said a spokeswoman. “We have a deep appreciation of the wool industry,” she said.

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