Ford Nabs PETA Award for 2020 Vegan Mustang Mach-E

Sporty New Car Wins the Race as PETA Campaigns to Get All Automakers to Go Leather-Free

For Immediate Release:
November 20, 2019

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

Dearborn, Mich. –

PETA’s eCow-Friendly Award is heading to Ford Motor Company for its new all-electric, leather-free Mustang Mach-E crossover SUV, due to arrive in showrooms in 2020. This first all-vegan Ford model comes after discussions with PETA, which points out that it can take the skin of between two and eight cows to make a single leather car interior, something that animal rights advocates and environmentalists find horrifying.

“Ford’s sleek Mustang Mach-E is a gift for the environmentally conscious consumer and for the gentle cows who will be spared a violent death and won’t be robbed of the skin they’re in,” says PETA President and car enthusiast Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA thanks Ford for ‘going further’ by launching this animal- and eco-friendly vehicle.”

The production of leather—which accounts for up to 20% of the commercial value of a cow—shares responsibility for the environmental hazards of the meat and dairy industries. Ranchers set fires in the Amazon rainforest to clear land on which to graze cattle and grow crops to feed them—and more than 80% of the Amazon that’s been cleared since 1970 is used for meat and leather production. The United Nations states that animal agriculture is responsible for nearly a fifth of human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions. A PETA video exposé of Brazil’s JBS S.A.—the world’s largest leather processor—revealed that cows and bulls were branded on the face, electroshocked, and beaten before being killed for meat and leather.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—also notes that turning skin into leather requires significant energy and dangerous chemicals, including formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, and cyanide-based oils, dyes, and finishes.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.