Photos: Duck Defenders Cause a Ruckus Outside H&M Annual Meeting

Photos: Duck Defenders Cause a Ruckus Outside H&M Annual Meeting

Stockholm – Earlier today, ahead of H&M’s annual meeting, PETA supporters in giant duck masks along with members of local animal welfare groups Animal Save Sweden and Direct Action Everywhere Stockholm descended on Karolinska Institutet, brandishing signs proclaiming “H&M: Down is Bloody Cruel. Drop it!” and “Birds Stabbed for Down,” demanding that the company stop selling items made from birds’ stolen feathers.

The action follows a PETA Asia investigation into Vina Prauden – a Vietnamese company that has previously supplied down to H&M – revealing that ducks’ throats were slit while they were still conscious and that the birds were seen moving for at least one minute afterwards.

Photos and video from the action are available here and here. Please credit Kamila Mankiewicz.

A PETA US representative also attended the meeting to deliver a shareholder resolution to H&M Group urging the board of directors to prepare a report on the slaughter methods used to procure down for the company. The resolution points out that H&M depends on the Textile Exchange’s demonstrably ineffective Responsible Down Standard (RDS) to make claims about animal welfare. H&M recently removed the RDS label from its offerings, indicating that it knows the RDS is a sham. The company provides no information about the farms and slaughterhouses that supply down for its products.

“Every down item represents the pain and suffering of terrified birds, and H&M’s days of hiding behind deceptive labels and certifications are numbered,” says PETA Vice President for Europe, UK and Australia Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA is urging H&M to put a stop to this cruelty by cutting ties with the down industry and sticking to the animal-friendly textiles that its shoppers already love.”

At a slaughterhouse that supplied down to Vina Prauden, PETA Asia investigators documented a worker violently grabbing birds, stepping on them to restrain them, and hanging them upside down in shackles. The ducks were dragged through an electrified water bath that paralysed them but didn’t render them unconscious. A worker then stabbed them in the neck with a knife and left them hanging and bleeding out. The slaughterhouse owner told investigators that her employees never check for signs of consciousness before slaughtering the birds.

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.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or Instagram.

Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

#