Levi’s Has a New Shareholder: PETA

Stock Purchase Allows Group to Urge Retailer to Nix Leather Patches on Jeans

For Immediate Release:
March 21, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

As part of its campaign to persuade Levi Strauss & Co. to use vegan leather patches on its jeans instead of ones made of cow skins, PETA has purchased the minimum number of shares in the company required to submit shareholder resolutions and to attend and speak at Levi’s annual meetings.

“Gentle cows are beaten, slaughtered, and skinned—all so that Levi’s can tack a small, completely nonfunctional patch on the back of some of its jeans,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is heading to Levi’s boardroom to urge the company to stop peddling these patches, which cause cows immense pain and suffering.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—notes that cows killed for leather often endure extreme crowding as well as castration and tail-docking without pain relief. A PETA exposé of the world’s largest leather processor revealed that gentle cows and bulls were branded on the face, electroshocked, and beaten before being killed. In addition, animal agriculture—which includes the leather industry—is responsible for 14 to 18 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.

PETA previously protested Levi’s use of leather at the retailer’s headquarters in San Francisco and created a Facebook video exposing the cruelty inherent in the leather industry.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.