For Immediate Release:
September 15, 2022
Contact:
Robin Goist 202-483-7382
New York – Duck-shaped vegan chocolates are on the way from PETA to outerwear retailer Bernardo in thanks for ending the sale of down and replacing it with feather-free Ecoplume insulation made from recycled plastic bottles. The move follows appeals from PETA informing the company that birds in the down industry are live-plucked and scalded in defeathering tanks.
“Today’s kind shoppers can bundle up in Bernardo’s luxurious jackets knowing they spare gentle geese and ducks a terrifying death,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is celebrating this company’s compassionate move and reminding everyone that each down puffer or pillow represents birds whose feathers were violently torn out.”
Bernardo’s decision follows PETA’s just-released exposé of “responsible” down suppliers, which revealed that highly sensitive, social geese were still conscious when workers mutilated their necks with an apparently dull axe—birds twitched for more than five minutes after being beheaded. The down industry also releases toxic chemicals, massive amounts of antibiotics, and fecal waste onto land and into waterways, harming workers, wildlife, and the environment.
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.
