How to Stay Warm in the Backcountry Without Hurting Geese
Down products dominate backpacking, but the industry is incredibly cruel. Luckily there are still great options for adventurers with heart.
If you’re reading this, you probably care about geese. I do, too. Geese are very loyal to their families and mate for life. Sometimes, when their life partner dies, they refuse to ever mate again, spending the rest of their lives in mourning. Understanding the emotional lives of geese make it impossible for me to justify financially supporting the companies that make a business of breeding geese to live in constant mourning for the sake of down jackets and sleeping bags.
The bulk of down feathers taken from geese come from those already being raised for meat and foie gras, adding just one more cruel system of abuse to the birds' lives. The geese we marvel at while they fly in precise “V” formations in the sky are crammed into tight quarters in what’s likely a warehouse or cage. To maximize the number of feathers taken by each bird, they are individually “live-plucked” from as young as ten weeks old. By the time their raw skin has recovered from the abuse and their feathers grow back, they’re tied by their feet and plucked again. This is their bi-monthly trauma for years until they’re…
