Shame on Canada Goose
- yasminbemath
- Nov 23, 2017
- 3 min read
Canada Goose (CG) opened its flagship store on Regent Street in the centre of London’s West End at the beginning of November. There was no big fanfare, in fact they tried their best to make it as low key as possible. Why not shout out about your products and brand if you’re so proud of them?
They unashamedly make no apologies for their unethical use of real fur and down, this stance quite rightly makes them a target for animal rights activists.
Around 400 of us attended a demonstration arranged by Surge outside the shop on their first Saturday of trading, we were loud but peaceful and made sure that everyone knew why we were there.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the Metropolitan police but I will be delving deeper into their erratic and heavy handed behaviour in a future blog.
So why target Canada Goose? Despite various undercover exposes they continue to hide behind their marketing lies of ‘ethical harvesting’.
Coyotes (canis latrans) are very closely related to our pet dogs (canis familiaris), sharing 97% of their DNA, they cross breed successfully and produce viable offspring.
Pic: Coydog (coyote x domestic dog).
CG’s website claims that they are ‘deeply committed to the humane treatment of animals.’ However the reality is very different:
Steel leg hold traps (banned in all countries except Canada and the USA) are used to trap and legally should be checked daily but this is rarely the case, coyotes are left unchecked for days leaving them in agony and starving
Trapping is indiscriminate, pets and other protected wildlife are often the victims of leg hold traps and die slow painful deaths
There is no season for trapping coyotes so nursing mothers will be caught leaving vulnerable young pups to starve or be killed by other predators
A trapped coyote will chew off its own limb to try and escape
It goes on, ‘we never purchase from fur farms, never use fur from endangered animals and only purchase from certified Canadian trappers.’
The pelts are purchased through North American Fur Auctions (NAFA), and according to CG the NAFA ‘monitors very closely’ the practices of trappers selling through it.
However, according to Animal Justice Canada Legislative Fund it does nothing of the sort. Instead they confirm ‘There is no mechanism within NAFA to provide any degree of oversight of the trapping practices of the trappers from which NAFA accepts consignment pelts.’
NAFA, it states does not monitor trappers and it is not an oversight body, but rather a commercial fur auction house.
The reality is very different for the animals caught in these traps:
It really doesn’t take a genius to work out none of this is ‘humane’ but you can see why CG would not want this information included in their ‘ethical’ fur policy.
You don’t have to be a vegan to understand that real fur is cruel, the UK closed down its last fur farm in the early 2000’s thanks in no small part to the Lynx anti-fur project who at the time worked with the top fashion models of the day and famous photographers to produce striking adverts showing the public the cruelty involved in this industry.
However in recent years we have seen the insidious creep of real fur back onto our high streets and that is not acceptable, particularly as we class ourselves as a nation of animal lovers.
So what can you do to help?
Come and join us every Saturday outside their shop on Regent Street to protest. If you’re interested contact Emma Jade Easton via Facebook or Messenger for more details.
Tell your friends and family about how cruel CG is and urge them not to buy their products
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