For Immediate Release:
September 21, 2022
Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382
Dana Point, Calif. – Earlier today, PETA supporters—frustrated by a lack of action against documented cruelty to animals in the clothing supply chain—disrupted the 5th Annual Wells Fargo Consumer Conference at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, where URBN Executive Director of Investor Relations Oona McCullough, Co-President and Chief Operating Officer Frank Conforti, and Chief Financial Officer Melanie Marein-Efron were set to meet with investors. Armed with signs reading, “URBN: Animals Are Not Clothing” and “The Face of Fashion Is Fear,” PETA supporters pushed for Urban Outfitters brands to stop selling materials derived from frightened and cut-up alpacas, lambs, and other animals and to opt for eco-friendly vegan materials instead. Video footage of the disruption is available here.
“Urban Outfitters continues to alienate today’s progressive shoppers by selling clothing that leaves sensitive animals bleeding and shrieking in pain, as dozens of PETA investigations have shown,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is urging Urban Outfitters to stop exploiting animals for their skin, feathers, or fleece and commit to cruelty-free fashion, just as many leading brands have already done.”
PETA entities’ undercover investigations have revealed that workers punch sheep in the wool industry; sensitive goats sustain bloody, gaping wounds at mohair and cashmere operations; cows are burned, electroshocked, beaten, and slaughtered for leather; workers yank the feathers of ducks and geese out by the fistful for down; and other horrors.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
