PETA to Levi’s Shareholders: Lose the Leather

For Immediate Release:
April 20, 2021

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Tomorrow, a PETA representative will attend Levi Strauss & Co.’s virtual annual meeting to ask why the company, which claims that “[g]etting dressed shouldn’t feel like a moral dilemma,” is still putting leather patches on some of its denim—despite knowing that cows are beaten, slaughtered, and skinned and the climate crisis is exacerbated by the leather industry.

“Levi’s wants to appeal to a progressive base, but it’s missing the mark as long as it keeps marring its denim and its reputation with leather,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is giving Levi’s a dressing down in the hope that it’ll scrap these patches in favor of the paper patches it already uses on most of its jeans.”

A PETA video exposé of the world’s largest leather producer revealed that cows and bulls were branded on the face, electroshocked, and beaten before being killed for their skin. Turning animal skins into leather can require the use of 130 different chemicals—including cyanide—and leather production produces massive amounts of the greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change. The World Bank has also reported that cattle ranching is responsible for over 80% of deforestation in the Amazon since 1970.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—has purchased the minimum number of shares in the company required to submit shareholder resolutions and to attend and speak at Levi’s annual meetings. PETA’s question is available here.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.