Mobile Billboard to Circle Urban Outfitters With Video of Cruelty
Footage of Animals Suffering for Wool, Skins, and More Will Pressure Company to Stop Selling Animal-Derived Clothing
For Immediate Release:
November 23, 2020
Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382
Just ahead of the busiest shopping day of the year, PETA will drive a mobile billboard—showing video footage from PETA’s and its affiliates’ investigations into the alpaca, mohair, cashmere, down, leather, and wool industries—around the Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Free People stores on Walnut Street tomorrow. The action is part of PETA’s new international campaign pushing all Urban Outfitters, Inc., brands to stop selling animal-derived items while they tout a “progressive” and “sustainable” agenda—and as part of that campaign, PETA will also hold protests outside the three stores on Black Friday, starting with Anthropologie at 12 noon.
When: Tuesday, November 24, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Where: Urban Outfitters (1627 Walnut St.), Anthropologie (1801 Walnut St.), Free People (1625 Walnut St.), Philadelphia
Anthropologie is implicated in a first-of-its-kind PETA investigation into the alpaca industry revealing that workers at a major supply farm in Peru tied crying alpacas to a rack, pulling their legs so hard that they nearly came out of their sockets, and left them with bloody wounds from rough shearing.
“Kind shoppers deserve to know that animals are mutilated, beaten, burned, and killed, all for sweaters, bags, and other goods sold at Urban Outfitters brands’ stores,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s mobile billboard will hold these stores accountable for perpetuating cruelty as long as they continue to sell animals’ stolen skins, fleece, and feathers.”
PETA is shining a spotlight on the dark side of the fashion industry—the one in which workers hit, kick, and mutilate gentle sheep for their wool; leave sensitive goats with bloody, gaping wounds at mohair and cashmere operations; burn, electroshock, beat, and slaughter cows for leather; yank out the feathers of ducks and geese by the fistful for down; boil silkworms alive to produce silk; and make alpacas spit and vomit in fear from rough shearing.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—has protested at Urban Outfitters brands’ stores across the country. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
