What keeps you warm in the cold season is connected to a lot of suffering for the animals plucked. Carrying ease together with optimum thermal performance are promised by both the clothing and the bedding production industries. They also advertise with manual labor involved in harvesting of down. We speak of down extraction in geese. Here, unimaginable suffering and cruelty open up. There are first pluck, second pluck, mother pluck and slaughter pluck. The first three plucking methods imply that the geese are plucked alive. Live pluck starts when the animals are only eight weeks old. The procedure is repeated two more times in intervals of eight weeks before the geese are slaughtered. Slaughter pluck means that the animals are plucked when dead, so this is a natural part of the production process. Unfortunately, live pluck is much more profitable economically. One kilo of downs brings 8 to 20 Euros. One slaughter pluck only results in about 150 grams of downs.

In Hungary, Poland, the Ukraine, and in parts of China live pluck is very widespread. The geese are plucked manually in so-called spring brigades. It's done in piecework. The animals are fixed by the workers between a chair and the thighs. Then the feathers from the neck, back, abdomen and chest are torn. Thereby the geese are seriously injured. Within five hours, approximately 3000 animals are plucked bald. The sometimes serious injuries are sewn immediately, without disinfection and anesthesia. The panicked animals, plucked completely naked, often run against walls, tables and seats in their pain. Live plucking is banned in the EU, so the procedure is now called live harvesting. The name changes but the suffering stays the same.

'Animal Protection concerns us all!', together with other animal welfare organisations, must stop this suffering. On the one hand by public relations, drawing attention to the "path" of the down, and on the other by forcing people to respect the EU laws. We call for effective controls of these geese farms.