For Immediate Release:
December 14, 2022
Contact:
Lauren Kent 202-483-7382
Vancouver, B.C. – In a push to get lululemon to cut ties with the now-exposed cruelty in the down industry, PETA has plastered a downtown bus shelter in front of the company’s headquarters with the face of a goose and the message “I Want You to Change.” Although the pro-bird display may ruffle feathers in lululemon’s office, PETA points out that banning down would help the yoga apparel retailer bring some peace and relief to birds, and kind-hearted shoppers.
The message comes as a new PETA Asia investigation reveals that workers at duck slaughterhouses in Vietnam stabbed conscious birds in the neck and cut off their feet while they were still conscious and struggling. Feathers from these facilities were later sold under the Responsible Down Standard (RDS), a deceptive label that serves only to dupe well-meaning shoppers and one that lululemon uses to sell its down products.
“lululemon must stop promoting standards so low and meaningless that they allow birds to be violently harmed and killed and must simply end the sale of down,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges everyone to save these beautiful birds by leaving down off their shopping lists.”
Violence is rampant in the down industry, and the RDS label doesn’t prevent suppliers from mutilating animals and killing them in cruel ways. A PETA Asia investigation into RDS-certified goose farms in Russia revealed geese being beheaded with a dull axe while they were fully conscious.
PETA owns stock in lululemon so as to push the retailer to ban down and submitted a shareholder resolution in December 2021 that called for the company to commission a report on the methods used to slaughter birds in its supply chain, but lululemon has refused to acknowledge the cruelty it pays for.
PETA notes that there are many warm and cozy vegan down options currently on the market, including Thinsulate, Climashield, and PrimaLoft.
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 or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
