PETA Wants Paul Manafort’s $15,000 Ostrich Jacket

For Immediate Release:
August 1, 2018

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk in response to the recent revelation from Paul Manafort’s trial that he spent $15,000 on a jacket “made from an ostrich”:

Paul Manafort’s ridiculous ostrich jacket may have cost him $15,000, but as PETA’s exposé of the ostrich-skin industry reveals, it was likely made from numerous juvenile ostriches whose throats were slit and whose feathers were plucked out. They paid a far higher price for this coat: their very lives. We are asking Mr. Manafort to imagine how much harder circumstances are for ostriches than for him and to donate this awful jacket for PETA to use in the same way that we use donated fur coats—to take to schools to remind children that animals are wonderful and that clothing made from them is not.

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear,” and more information about the ostrich-skin industry is available here.