Dear John,

Our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign has been global for a while, but the action has stepped up dramatically in Adidas’s home nation of Germany. Yesterday, at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Adidas in Fürth, Germany, animal advocates disrupted the meeting because the global shoe giant has been the biggest apologist and commercial driver of the long-running kangaroo massacres in Australia.

Presented with irrefutable images and arguments, Adidas CEO Björn Gulden acknowledged that the commercial hunting of kangaroos is "terrible" and added, “We will certainly, maybe, switch faster than you think,” hinting at a possible shift away from using kangaroo leather.

But Adidas has been slippery in its defense of the killing of millions of adult kangaroos and hundreds of thousands of joeys, even as all of its major competitors have cleansed their supply chains of kangaroo skins. Last year, Nike, New Balance, and the Germany-based Puma all announced policies to end their role in the commercial skin trade.

Yesterday, even as Gulden said the hunt is cruel, he added that the skins are a byproduct of a government cull. That is demonstrably false. The killing is done precisely because of foreign demand for the skins, and nobody is bigger than the global athletic shoe companies that make the uppers in their soccer cleats from kangaroo skins. And remember, this is the most popular sport in the world and the shoes are essential equipment to play the sport.

Members of Animal Rebellion, supported by shareholders, protested inside the event center, demanding answers from Gulden and CFO Harm Ohlmeyer. Shareholder Daniel Schier, who attended specifically to address this issue, said, “They say they use kangaroo leather in less than 1% of their shoes, yet they continue to do it despite clear evidence of its brutality and unsustainability. Good comes to companies that care about people and the planet.”

The corporate pledges by athletic wear companies to divorce themselves from the kangaroo skin trade are largely due to the efforts of the Kangaroos Are Not Shoes (KANS) campaign, initiated in 2020 by the Center for a Humane Economy. The KANS campaign aims to raise awareness about the inhumane commercial kangaroo industry, the largest commercial kill of terrestrial wildlife globally. An estimated 1 million adult kangaroos and 300,000 joeys suffer annually due to this industry. However, these numbers have decreased thanks to the relentless efforts of the Center.

Jennifer Skiff, director of the KANS campaign, has been actively engaging with Adidas executives on this critical issue. “Mr. Gulden has acknowledged the cruelty of the hunt and indicated that Adidas is listening to our arguments,” Skiff said. “We would expect an imminent announcement about ending the use of kangaroo leather based on his comments. But we’ve learned to be cautious with this company.” In 2012, Adidas pledged to end its role in the kangaroo-skin trade but then reneged.

As one of the world’s leading sportswear companies, Adidas now stands as an outlier in continuing to support the slaughter of Australia’s marsupials through their purchasing practices. Adidas, end this killing scheme!

So many of our supporters in the U.S. and abroad have enabled this campaign to keep driving forward. We are grateful to you.

Now it’s time to double down so we can finish it and end this awful massacre of kangaroos, who have lived on the Australian continent for the last 15 million years.

Please write your U.S. Representative and your two U.S. Senators today and urge them to cosponsor the Kangaroo Protection Act.

With you at our side, we can convince the biggest companies in the world and prevail and protect animals. Would you consider making a contribution to allow us to work to spare kangaroos from these merciless assaults?

Together, we are creating change and look forward to a future without cruelty to animals.

Sincerely,

Wayne Pacelle President Center for a Humane Economy