Eli Lilly, Canada Goose, and Others Earn PETA ‘Pants on Fire’ Awards

For Immediate Release:
January 26, 2021

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

“Pants on Fire” awards are on their way from PETA to 10 companies that are guilty of humane washing—that is, trying to deceive customers about their use and abuse of animals.

Each of the following recipients will receive an award certificate:

• Eli Lilly, which boasts of its “commitment to responsible animal research” while refusing to ban the forced swim test, in which gentle mice and rats are dropped into water-filled beakers and forced to swim for their lives
• Oswald’s Bear Ranch, which calls itself a “rescue refuge” even though an overwhelming majority of the bears it has acquired in the last 20 years were apparently purposely bred and stolen from their mothers to be used in lucrative photo ops
• Nellie’s Free Range Eggs, which advertises its eggs with photos of hens on rolling green hills even though PETA uncovered thousands of hens crammed into a shed at one Nellie’s “free range” supplier
• Organic Valley and Clover Sonoma, which brag about their high standards for cows even though, in the dairy industry, cows are forcibly impregnated, their babies are taken away from them, and they’re sent to slaughter once their bodies wear out
• Zoo Med Laboratories, Inc., which falsely tells customers that snakes can be held in enclosures that are only half the length of their bodies even though experts agree that being able to stretch out is essential to snakes’ well-being
• Other recipients claim to care about the welfare of the animals whose fur, feathers, or wool they take for their products:
  • Canada Goose, which sells fur from coyotes who can endure excruciating pain in steel traps and down feathers from birds who are violently killed
  • Madewell, which sells leather, for which cows’ throats are slit in slaughterhouses, and cashmere, for which goats scream in pain as their hair is torn out
  • Everlane, which sells alpaca fleece, for which workers hit, kick, tie down, and mutilate pregnant, crying alpacas
  • Allbirds, which sells wool, which comes from sheep who are treated horribly and eventually killed in the industry

“Instead of meeting the skyrocketing demand for vegan products that are kind to animals, brands like Nellie’s Eggs and Allbirds are hiding behind empty welfare policies that don’t do squat to stop animal suffering,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA won’t stand by and let them pull the wool—or the fur or leather—over concerned customers’ eyes.”

PETA’s motto is “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way,” and the group opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.