OUR ENVIRONMENT


No Fluff D


Is wearing down set to become as controversial as wearing animal fur? As animal welfare charity PETA campaigns for it to be banned, Sarah Stirling finds out the facts behind the feathers.


own has revolutionised the outdoor world. But can we take it for granted that it’ll always be available? As Mountain Equipment’s down catalogue points out: “We have built the pyramids, split the atom and been to the moon, yet the humble down from geese and ducks remains the best insulating material that we have.”


Our story begins back in 2012, when two surprising things happened simultaneously to shake up the down world. Firstly, animal welfare charities threw outdoor gear companies to the media hounds by exposing where down really came from: “An investigation by The Sunday Times has traced the source of The North Face’s feathers to geese kept on intensive farms in Hungary. The birds are artificially fattened by having funnels pushed into their beaks, and then large amounts of boiled corn mash are forced down their throats using a pressurised air hose.” If you own a pre-2012 down jacket or sleeping bag, chances are high there’s some down from birds that had suffered a short, brutish life of force-feeding jostling around in there. After all, down is a by-product of the meat industry and, though banned in UK supermarkets, foie gras is still popular elsewhere. As if this life of misery couldn’t get any worse, another practice was exposed: to maximise down output, some farm birds were regularly ‘live-plucked’.


SUMMIT#85 | SPRING 2017 | 43


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