PETA Goes ‘All In’ on Allbirds Stock

For Immediate Release:
November 3, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

After merino wool–focused shoe retailer Allbirds went public on the Nasdaq today, PETA became one of its first shareholders—a move that will allow the group to attend the company’s annual meetings and urge it to swap wool for actually sustainable vegan textiles.

“Every wool Allbirds shoe represents a gentle sheep who may have been kicked, punched, or left in a pool of her own blood on a shearing shed floor,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “With our new shareholder status, PETA will push Allbirds to cut the greenwashing by eliminating wool from its products.”

PETA and its affiliates have documented cruelty to sheep while visiting 117 wool operations worldwide, revealed in 14 exposés. Even on so-called “sustainable” and “responsible” farms, workers beat, stomped on, cut open the skin of, and slit the throats of conscious, struggling sheep. By switching entirely to sustainable vegan materials, such as the eucalyptus tree fiber that it’s already using, Allbirds could avoid contributing to the devastating environmental cost of wool production: water pollution, desertification, methane emissions, and wildlife culling.

Previously, PETA gave Allbirds a “Pants on Fire” award for humane washing—claiming to care about animal welfare and the environment even though it sells wool stolen from sheep—and over 110,000 PETA supporters called on the company to sell only innovative and sustainable vegan materials instead.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—often purchases the minimum number of shares necessary in order to influence management decisions from inside companies, including retailers Ralph Lauren, Canada Goose, Urban Outfitters, and Guess. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.