Duck Defenders to Speak Inside, Protest Outside H&M’s Annual Meeting

For Immediate Release:
May 3, 2023

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Solna, Sweden –

Ahead of H&M’s annual meeting on Thursday, giant “ducks” alongside PETA supporters and members of local animal welfare groups Animal Save Sweden and Direct Action Everywhere Stockholm will descend on Karolinska Institutet on Thursday, demanding that the company stop selling items made using birds’ stolen feathers. A PETA representative will also attend the meeting to speak in support of a shareholder resolution calling on H&M Group’s board of directors to prepare a report on the slaughter methods used to procure down for the company.

The action follows a PETA Asia investigation into Vina Prauden—a Vietnamese company that has supplied down to H&M—revealing ducks suffering from gaping and bloody wounds, languishing in dirty sheds and lots strewn with feces, and being stabbed in the neck while still conscious. Many of the birds continued to move for more than a minute after workers cut their necks.

“H&M is alienating progressive shoppers with its ‘humane washing,’ as every down item represents the pain and suffering of terrified birds,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is urging H&M to help end this cruelty by banning down and sticking to animal-friendly materials, such as those it already sells and that its shoppers love.”

PETA’s resolution will point out that H&M depends on the Textile Exchange’s demonstrably ineffective Responsible Down Standard (RDS) to make claims about animal welfare. H&M recently removed the RDS label from its offerings, indicating that it knows the RDS is a sham. The company provides no information about the farms and slaughterhouses that supply down for its products.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.