PETA Pushes for Bird-Slaughter Probe at lululemon

For Immediate Release:
December 22, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

This morning, PETA—which owns stock in lululemon—submitted a shareholder resolution to the company’s board of directors calling for a report on the slaughter methods used to obtain the down used in its jackets. If and when those methods are found to be incompatible with lululemon’s animal welfare policy, PETA says, shareholders will need to know how the company will mitigate any risks—such as potential false-advertising claims—associated with that discrepancy.

PETA points out that although lululemon asserts that “[w]e require that animals in our supply chain are treated humanely and with respect,” all birds used for down end up at slaughterhouses, where they are typically hung upside down, they’re electroshocked, their throats are slit, and their bodies are dumped into scalding water for defeathering.

“lululemon is selling jackets filled with the feathers of birds who are violently killed, betraying the yoga principle of ahimsa, or nonviolence, that it splashes on its shopping bags,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s resolution would prove to lululemon that it’s misleading its customers about the suffering and deaths of animals in its supply chain.”

lululemon purports to ensure that animals in its supply chain are “humanely” treated by relying on the Responsible Down Standard (RDS). But PETA investigations have connected RDS-certified suppliers with live plucking, in which workers rip feathers from conscious birds’ bodies, and workers even admitted to mislabeling the down to fool customers. In another exposé of a down farm marketed as “humane,” workers herded geese into corners, where they trampled and crushed each other, before throwing them into cramped crates. Some birds were left in filthy cages for up to 24 hours without food or water.

High-tech synthetic materials—including Thinsulate, Climashield, and PrimaLoft—are warm and cozy, and unlike down, they don’t lose their insulating power when wet.

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.