Adidas: Get out of the kangaroo-skin trade!

It’s official. Nike and Puma have dispensed with their kangaroo-shoe offerings.

Their change in sourcing of raw materials for their shoes—which came after a three-year campaign by the Center for a Humane Economy—took effect on January 1.

Nike and Puma are out of the business of using kangaroos for their shoes. And these are worldwide changes, applied in more than 150 countries, making their shifts in corporate policy one of the most significant developments in our global Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign.

Our activism is effective and life-saving for kangaroos. Will you make a contribution of $10 to support our work today?

Last September, New Balance also pledged to end its sourcing of kangaroo skins for shoes, joining Puma, Nike, and the Italy-based company Diadora.

Among the big five global athletic wear brands, Adidas now stands alone as the outlier, singularly driving the largest kill of terrestrial wildlife on our planet.

And that means that Adidas is our full-on target for our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign.

Adidas Leaders Don’t Seem to Have a Conscience

I am so disappointed that Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden won’t align his company’s policies on the trade in wildlife parts with his major competitors.

At least one of his predecessors at Adidas reneged on a pledge by the company to exit the kangaroo-skin trade in 2012. Now, 12 years later, its purchasing of kangaroo skins continues to produce a bloody mess in the Outback.

The company continues to trust the hollow assertions from the government of Australia that the commercial kill is “humane” and “well-regulated.”

That’s an astonishing denial of reality.

Let’s remember that kangaroos are uniquely adapted to Australia’s landscape after 15 million years of habitation.

What they cannot rebut is that commercial shooters take aim at kangaroos in the dark of the night and try to slay any adult kangaroo they can catch in the glare of their spotlights.

The result: the mass shooting of lactating females and the mass orphaning of the joeys. How can the company call the kill humane when the commercial shooters orphan 300,000 newborns every year? When has mass orphaning ever been considered “humane” or “well-regulated”?

The Athletic Shoe Industry Is Racing Ahead, but Adidas is Stuck in the Muck

The center of gravity in the global debate over kangaroo-skin shoes has shifted with the important announcements from Adidas’ competitors. The question is, when will Adidas finally divorce itself from the mass killings of animals who need their skins much more than the company ever has?

We are stepping up our worldwide campaign to get Adidas to stop driving the slaughter of kangaroos in their native habitats in Australia. Advocates in Germany are now conducting protests at Adidas headquarters—joining protestors from New York to Melbourne in calling out the company at their retail outlets.

We also are pushing H.R. 4995, the Kangaroo Protection Act of 2023, in Congress.

We need an outpouring of public concern to convince the entire Congress that this is the right policy for the United States.

And it’s important to tell Adidas that you won’t support the company until it halts its unconscionable role in enabling the massacre of wildlife.

I hope you’ll take action today. And part of that action is to support our campaign to end the largest massacre of native wild mammals in the world.

Thank you for standing with us and working to defend these animals from the midnight massacres in Australia. To fight it, we’ll continue to mount a game-changing, strategic battle plan that puts an end to this bloody business.

For Australia’s wildlife,

Wayne Pacelle President Animal Wellness Action