Coach’s Cruelty to Cows to Draw Grisly Anti-Leather Display From PETA on Black Friday in Chicago
For Immediate Release:
November 27, 2024
Contact:
Maddy Missett 202-483-7382
On the busiest shopping day of the year, holiday crowds will be met with a gruesome sight outside a local Coach store, as a group of PETA supporters will display a giant, grisly “bloody cow head” alongside the message, “Here’s the rest of your leather handbag,” to call out the company’s rampant use of animal and planet-killing leather. The provocative action is part of PETA’s inaugural Free the Animals Friday, a nationwide Black Friday initiative that seeks to call attention to the suffering of billions of animals slaughtered every year for leather and other animal-derived clothing and inspire holiday shoppers to choose fashionable and cruelty-free vegan options.
“Every leather item is stitched with the misery of a thinking, feeling being who died in agony,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Coach to stop peddling the sliced-off skin of tormented animals and urges holiday shoppers to keep cruelty off their gift list by refusing to buy leather.”
Where: Coach, 444 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago (near Illinois Street and Michigan Avenue)
When: Friday, November 29, 11:30 a.m.
Why: Cows have friends, hold grudges against other cows, and mourn when a loved one dies or when they’re separated from each other. A PETA exposé of the world’s largest leather processor—which has supplied Coach—showed that workers brand calves on the face, beat cows and bulls, and shock them with electric prods. The leather industry also contributes to climate catastrophe, land devastation, deforestation, pollution, water contamination, and biodiversity loss.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
