Dear John,
Adidas is the outlier.
Among companies that enable the killing of kangaroos for soccer cleats, Adidas is No. 1.
In recent weeks, I’ve reported to you that our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign has scored some signature wins: Nike and Puma have announced they will no longer use kangaroo leather in their soccer cleat offerings.
Those corporate policy declarations came two years after the Italy-based Diadora announced it would halt any use of kangaroo skins.
And all these decisions flowed from what one reporter rightly called “a relentless campaign from the Center for a Humane Economy.”
But, to be sure, our campaign isn’t complete. And the biggest problem now staring us in the face is Adidas. The Germany-based company and its executives have been horrid on wildlife protection.
Fifteen years ago, Adidas bigwigs came before the California Supreme Court and tried to invalidate the Golden State’s landmark law that forbids selling kangaroo parts. Fortunately, Adidas lost, and California’s law stands.
Nonetheless, the company has persisted in buying up kangaroo skins from commercial shooters in Australia and turning countless kangaroos into soccer cleats. Soccer cleats that no player needs any longer. Soccer cleats built from the slain bodies of beautiful animals.
I also told you a month ago that the no-kangaroo-killing announcement from Puma was especially significant because it was Puma that started the corporate shift toward kangaroo skins in the late 1960s, achieving a marketing milestone when the soccer legend Pelé laced up Puma Kings in a key World Cup game. Then Nike, one of the best-known brands in the world, said just more than a week later that it is shedding kangaroo skins. The company said it “will stop making any product with kangaroo leather in 2023.”
The word from Adidas: silence. And, to paraphrase a common refrain, silence equals death when it comes to shoe companies and kangaroos.
Remember, commercial shooters massacre two million kangaroos a year in the wild in Australia. That includes 500,000 joeys left as orphans by night-time shooters. The government of Australia says it’s acceptable for the shooters to pick up the babies left behind in the pouch or at the foot of their mums and bash in their skulls with a rock or against the bumpers of their trucks.
No other commercial kill of native wildlife occurs on such a scale or is as ruthless. No slaughter, to be sure, claims this mass number of juveniles as collateral damage.
Remember, if Adidas continues to buy skins, the commercial demand for kangaroo skins will persist and the mass slaughter will endure.
But with the corporate gains we’ve secured, we are closer than ever to stopping the global trade in kangaroo parts for footwear for the world’s most popular sport.
You can help right now.
Please make a contribution to the Center so we can keep pressing this issue and run a global campaign worthy of the scale of this problem.
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With you at our side, we are convincing the biggest companies in the world to protect animals.
Kangaroos do not exist to be turned into shoes.
Thanks for being in this fight with us.
For the kangaroos,
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Wayne Pacelle
President
Center for a Humane Economy
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