Canada Goose Forces PETA to Withdraw Shareholder Proposal

For Immediate Release:
June 15, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

After PETA submitted a shareholder proposal calling on Canada Goose to stop using coyote fur from animals caught in steel traps and down from farmed birds in its parkas, the company’s lawyers threatened to sue PETA if it didn’t withdraw the proposal—the third consecutive year that the company has made such a threat. Rather than engaging in a protracted and costly legal battle to defend against an unwarranted lawsuit, PETA has decided to withdraw its proposal today and attack the company’s practices through direct interaction with its potential customers.

“Canada Goose retained lawyers in the U.S. and Canada to stop the publication of PETA’s proposal to its shareholders, as it would have had to discuss at a meeting of shareholders the miserable deaths of countless geese and coyotes,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Instead of pouring our donors’ money down a litigation drain, PETA will now spend the same amount on protests and ads that empower the public to reject Canada Goose’s cruel fur-and-feather coats.”

Standard industry practice in the fur and down industries allows for fur trappers to use painful snares and steel traps that slam down on coyotes’ legs and for geese to be shipped to slaughterhouses, where they’re stunned, their throats are cut, and their bodies are dragged through scalding-hot defeathering tanks.

Following a PETA complaint and a subsequent Federal Trade Commission investigation, Canada Goose stopped claiming that its standards ensure that its suppliers don’t abuse animals. Next week, the group will be running ads in New York City near the company’s flagship store reading, “Here’s the Rest of Your Canada Goose Jacket.”

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.