PETA to Call Levi’s Bluff on Animal Welfare at Annual Shareholder Meeting
For Immediate Release:
April 19, 2022
Contact:
Robin Goist 202-483-7382
PETA will confront Levi Strauss & Co. about the slaughter methods used to obtain leather for the patches used on its jeans during the company’s annual meeting tomorrow and will urge it to commission a report proving that the animals in its supply chain have “freedom from fear and distress,” as the brand claims. The group purchased stock in Levi’s in 2019 to pressure it from the inside to switch to vegan leather.
“Levi’s is alienating progressive shoppers with its ‘humane washing’ and refusal to stop sewing skins of slaughtered animals onto its jeans,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Once Levi’s is faced with the suffering and fear that every cow endures for its leather patches, it will have no choice but to stop using leather for a simple branding opportunity.”
Retailers like Levi’s hide behind standards that don’t prevent animals from suffering, as evidenced by PETA’s exposés. Cows used in the leather industry are castrated and branded, their tails are cut off, and their horns are burned out of their heads. After a miserable life of extreme crowding and deprivation, they’re shipped to slaughterhouses, where their throats are slit and many are even skinned and dismembered while they’re still conscious.
Leather production also employs the use of more than 100 chemicals—including cyanide—and releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases, which contribute to the climate catastrophe. Consumers’ concern over the impact of leather production on animals and the environment has fueled the demand for animal-free, eco-conscious alternatives. Market research shows that more than half of shoppers are opting for vegan leather.
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 newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
