Companies Scramble After PETA Asia Exposes Down Industry Cruelty

For Immediate Release:
December 16, 2022

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Scrubbed websites, internal investigations, and halted business with farms and slaughterhouses in Vietnam: These are just some of the attempts at damage control companies have made on the heels of PETA Asia’s damning investigation into Vina Prauden—a Prauden-owned down supplier for Gap Inc., H&M, Lacoste, and other brands—and Nam Vu, a down supplier for GUESS.

The investigation revealed workers at duck slaughterhouses in Vietnam stabbing conscious birds in the neck and cutting off their feet while they were still struggling. Feathers from these facilities were later sold under the deceptive Responsible Down Standard (RDS) label. Panicked corporate responses include the following:

• H&M removed all animal welfare labels from its online offerings and erased mentions of the RDS and “responsible down.”
• Nam Vu delisted GUESS as a customer on its website and later removed its entire online list of customers.
• Prauden claims to have cut off the part of its supply chain that includes Vietnamese farms and slaughterhouses while it investigates. Nam Vu says that it’s also reinspecting facilities.
• Prauden removed its list of customers from its website (formerly here).
• Textile Exchange claims to be investigating, just as it does after every PETA exposé, although no changes in the standards appear ever to have been made.

“This investigation revealed that workers stabbed ducks in the throat and cut off the feet of conscious birds, and now companies are desperate to walk back their involvement,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on these brands to take action in a way that really counts, which is by ditching down altogether.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. Photos from the investigation are available here, and broadcast-quality footage is available for download here. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.