Restoration Hardware to Face Shareholder Action Over Sales of Down

PETA Will Urge Company to Help Save Birds by Ditching Down and Sticking to Feather-Free Pillows

For Immediate Release:
February 11, 2020

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

This morning, PETA—which owns stock in Restoration Hardware—submitted a shareholder resolution calling on the company to take an important first step toward eliminating its use of down entirely by ending its sale of feather inserts for decorative pillows.

In the down industry, workers often restrain birds and rip out their feathers by the fistful, sometimes leaving them with bloody, gaping wounds. Buying down can also support the foie gras industry, as producers frequently boost their profits by selling the feathers of birds who are force-fed until their livers become diseased and swell to up to 10 times their normal size. And all birds used for down are ultimately shipped to slaughterhouses, where many are still conscious when their throats are slit and they’re run through the scalding-hot water of defeathering tanks.

“The down industry sentences gentle birds to a terrifying death while spewing contaminants into our atmosphere,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Restoration Hardware to save animals and the planet by exclusively selling the warm, luxurious down-free pillows that are already on its shelves.”

PETA’s resolution highlights not only the down industry’s cruelty to birds but also the environmental devastation that it causes: Down is a coproduct of the meat industry, which is a major producer of the greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change. The poultry industry in particular emits high levels of ammonia, uses antibiotics and toxic chemicals that can leach into waterways, and acts as a breeding ground for pathogens like bird flu viruses and E. coli bacteria.

PETA first purchased stock in Restoration Hardware and began calling on it to stop selling down in 2013. The company agreed to stop selling mohair after a PETA video exposé revealed cruelty to goats in the mohair industry, but it still sells down inserts for decorative pillows.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.