I’m not proud of a lot of the choices I make and have made in my lifetime. Every day, I face moral dilemmas as a consumer feeling frustration and rage at my apparent impotence in the face of a market driven by not much more than economic rationalism.
However, I am made extremely hopeful by the increasing emergence of real leaders across the manufacturing and merchant industries – the messages they send via their presence, the transparency they engage with, and the courage with which they lift the playing field up out of the mud of the status quo.
I recently found out about the process of plucking geese for down – a luxury material that fills doonas, pillows and windbreakers. A massive, but “officially untallied” percentage of the down that goes into these common consumer products are plucked from geese while they are still alive.
“Live plucking” is a common practice on farms and in factories in developing countries – where much of the Western world’s down is sourced from – because it is far more cost effective than simply waiting until an animal is slaughtered for food, and plucking the carcass after death. You can get up to three times the volume of down (the soft, insulating undercoat) from a goose during its lifetime.
It makes perfect economic sense. It also makes for perfect torture.
The animals are plucked entirely unanaesthetised (naturally): they’re gripped around the neck, and handfuls of their top feathers and down are pulled out violently until each goose is naked, traumatised and often severely physically wounded. This is repeated at least twice more while it is still alive, and it is then taken to slaughter after which its feathers are harvested for a final time.
The down is then shipped out to various distributors who sell the product to multinational manufacturing companies that deal in the production of the fluffy, comforting items that keep us feeling cosy.
The more down you get, the lower your prices per yield, and the greater your competitive advantage. On the other end, the more down products can be made, the greater the market proliferation, and the sturdier your brand’s performance on the shelf. In other words: the more we buy. Geese are plucked live to keep us coughing up.
A vast majority of products that are composed of down are unlabelled as to its origin. But some of them are. Some businesses are going out of their way to do the right thing.
I get excited when I learn of this kind of news – not just because it means I can make a more humane choice at the counter, but because it reassures me that there are businesses out there taking a stand on specific consumer values, and taking a lead within an industry that is otherwise engaged in morally dubious practices.
It means that we as consumers have the power to ask for an alternative. To, in the case of insulating garments and bedding, either choose different, cruelty-free materials, or seek out companies who harvest down either from nests, or from free-range birds who have been slaughtered for food prior to plucking.
It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed – not only by the seeming “choice” on offer to us as shoppers but scarily, often by the genuine lack thereof when it comes to changing easy-sleazy shopping habits.
But the great thing is that we are one question, or one swipe of the credit card away from making a difference. Even if it feels small by comparison to a big and broad-reaching problem, our transactions compounded will be what create lasting market change.