Is It Okay To Wear A Down Jacket?
If you own a down jacket that’s more than six years old, odds are there’s some live-plucked feathers inside. If you bought one last week, from a big-name fashion brand that touts its ethical credentials, well, there still may well be some live-plucked down inside. Around 80% of the world’s down is produced in China, mostly by independent farmers who have small flocks of ducks and geese that supply down to a central collector. Being small, they can offer their birds space to move about and access to ponds. Most don’t live-pluck. But some do, and scale means it’s tricky to winkle out the bad apples.
The world’s other big down producer is Hungary, where live-plucking isn’t illegal. The country is also the second biggest producer of foie gras, the delicacy made by force-feeding ducks and geese until their livers fatten up. Even if the down in your jacket wasn’t live-plucked, the creature it came from may have led a nasty, brutish and short life with a tube down its throat.
Even Patagonia, a brand that’s eco-credentials are about as unassailable as they come, isn’t innocent here. After a 2012 investigation by animal welfare group Four Paws, it discovered that it had next to no idea what was going on in its supply chain and that its products contained down from both live-plucked and force-fed geese. Its response was the Traceable Down Standard, which tracks birds from egg to abattoir to make sure that nothing untoward happens along the way. Its biggest competitor, The North Face, set up the Responsible Down Standard, which offers similar monitoring but also certificates the down that ends up in bedding.
Uniqlo
Ethics are expensive, which is why coats from brands with a conscience cost more. Canada Goose, whose jackets have spawned a thousand knock-offs, sources most of its down from an Amish-like Christian sect, the Canadian Hutterites, who’ve bred free-range, field-raised geese for decades. It’s expensive, but a small price to pay for the ability to sleep at night. Those knockoffs, however, are definitely padded with something more unpalatable.
