Comedian and Honorary PETA Director Bill Maher will call on Canada Goose to stop selling jackets made with coyote fur and down feathers during its online annual meeting for shareholders on Thursday.
Before and during the meeting, PETA supporters will also protest in front of the retailer’s headquarters in Toronto and outside its flagship store in New York City.
Submitting the question on behalf of PETA, Maher writes, “[Canada Goose’s] fur sourcing ‘standards’ still allow coyotes caught in steel traps to languish with potential broken bones and hemorrhaging for days before the trapper returns to shoot or bludgeon them to death. [Its] jackets are stuffed with the down feathers of birds who died violently …. When will Canada Goose get with the times and stop using real fur and down?”
PETA — whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” — notes that trapped coyote mothers desperate to get back to their starving pups have tried to chew off their own legs to escape and that many trapped animals succumb to the elements, blood loss, infection, or attacks by predators before trappers return to kill them. Ducks and geese used for down are shipped in all weather extremes to the slaughterhouse, where their throats are cut.
Following a PETA complaint and subsequent Federal Trade Commission investigation, Canada Goose has stopped claiming that its standards ensure that its suppliers don’t abuse animals.
