“Help Everyone Become ‘Free to Be’”: PETA Urges Sydney Mardi Gras Parade to End Cruel Feather Use

Sydney—As the 47th annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade approaches, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has written to Mardi Gras CEO Gil Beckwith urging organisers to ban real birds’ feathers at the parade.

“The Sydney Mardi Gras Parade is all about equity, joy, and challenging oppression, and this year’s theme is ‘Free to Be,’” says PETA Senior Campaigns Advisor Mimi Bekhechi. “We’re urging Mardi Gras to extend these values to everyone and allow birds to be ‘free to be’ the wonderful individuals they are by banning real feathers.”

Ostriches, whose feathers are widely used in fashion, are factory-farmed in cramped feedlots before being trucked to the slaughterhouse at just a year old. One eyewitness investigation released by PETA showed workers at the world’s largest ostrich farms striking birds as young as one year old in the face. The birds are then forcibly restrained, electrically stunned, and have their throats slit before their feathers are torn from their still-warm bodies, and they’re skinned and dismembered. Others are victims of live plucking.

Turkeys and chickens endure short lives on dark, dirty, crowded factory farms so their feathers— sometimes labelled “marabou”— can be used for fashion, while the breeding of pheasants, parrots, and peacocks is shrouded in secrecy, breeding black market activity.

In 2024, Victoria’s Secret staged its first show featuring stunning designs made exclusively from faux feathers; celebrity designer Stella McCartney launched a Feather-Free Pledge with PETA UK, and the Fashion Weeks of Melbourne, Berlin, Helsinki and Copenhagen have all banned wild feathers from runways.

PETA’s letter to Gil Beckwith is available here. PETA— whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”— opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.au and follow PETA onFacebook andInstagram.

Contact:

Olivia Charlton +61 403226961 [email protected]

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