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Dear John,
This week I wrote to the CEO of Adidas, the global brand best known for athletic shoes, and told him it is long past due that the Germany-based brand stop financing the mass slaughter of kangaroos in the Australian Outback.
Every year, two million kangaroos are killed for their parts, mainly for their skins to make soccer cleat uppers.
“The use of kangaroo leather for soccer cleats is inconsistent with Adidas’s claims that the company ‘aims to source materials of animal origin in a humane, ethical, and sustainable manner concerning animal welfare and species conservation,’” I wrote in my letter.
Puma announced last month that it is ditching kangaroo leather for non-animal-based material called K-BETTER, stating it “has proven to outperform the previous KING K-Leather in testing for touch, comfort, and durability.” Just more than a week later, Nike announced that it will stop using kangaroo skins for its Nike Tiempo model and all cleats in 2023.
These were signature corporate gains for our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign, but the campaign won’t be complete until Adidas, New Balance, and all other athletic wear companies stop exchanging money for wildlife parts.
I also told the Adidas CEO that the company’s kangaroo-based soccer cleats continue to be illegally sold in California, based on our latest on-the-ground investigation of retail sellers there. California law strictly bans any sale of kangaroo parts, but somehow Adidas’s shoes continue to be in commercial circulation. It’s bad enough that the company is at odds with its own corporate pledges and policies, but it also may be in violation of the law.
Fortune 500 companies like Adidas should pay attention to these standards, along with honoring our society’s moral codes when it comes to the treatment of animals. The commercial hunt invariably results in mass shootings of lactating females, with joeys still in their pouch or nursing from their mother. As many as 500,000 joeys are killed as collateral damage! The government says it’s okay to slam the joey’s head against the side of a truck or use a rock to crush the animal’s small skull.
This is sickening and outrageous. The scale of the incidental killing of joeys is larger than the take in Canada’s grisly commercial killing of baby harp seals and hooded seals at its zenith.
Our campaign won’t end until one of the world’s biggest shoe sellers gets out of the business of financing this mass slaughter of wildlife.
You can help right now.
Please write Adidas and tell its executives what you think about its sourcing of wildlife parts for its shoes. We’ve made it simple for you to send a letter with our on-line communications platform. Tell the company you are done buying their products until the company stops the financing of this massacre. Just click this link to start your email.
And please consider donating to our campaign. So many lives are at stake. The hunt will continue until the major companies that have long sourced kangaroo parts halt that practice once and for all.
For the kangaroos,
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Wayne Pacelle
President
Center for a Humane Economy
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