Aritzia to Face Pressure from PETA at Annual Meeting

For Immediate Release:
July 6, 2021

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

“When will Aritzia begin to show respect for its consumer base, stop hiding behind ineffective standards, and prohibit the sale of animal-derived materials, starting with mohair and alpaca?” That’s the question that a representative of PETA—which purchased stock in the Vancouver-based fashion company last year during the COVID-19 market downturn—will take to its virtual meeting tomorrow.

“When kind shoppers see an alpaca sweater or a mohair scarf on the rack, they picture alpacas and goats being cut up and killed,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Aritzia to give its progressive customers what they want: collections that are free from mohair and alpaca fleece.”

Retailers like Aritzia hide behind standards that don’t prevent animals from suffering, as evidenced by PETA’s exposés of so-called “sustainable” and “responsible” farms. The group’s exposé of the alpaca industry revealed that workers hit, kicked, tied down, and mutilated pregnant alpacas—and PETA Asia’s investigation into the mohair industry revealed that workers dragged, threw around, mutilated, and even cut the throats of fully conscious goats.

Aritzia has banned fur and angora. Countless other brands have banned mohair and alpaca fleece.

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.