Only days before launching a Canadian tour, Morrissey is urging fans to protest Canada Goose.
“Canada Goose has almost singlehandedly revived the cruel trapping industry, in which animals can suffer for days and try to gnaw off their ensnared limbs before the trapper eventually returns to bludgeon them to death,” the British singer claimed, in an open letter. “No hood adornment is worth that.
“And geese are confined to cramped cages and trucked hundreds of miles to slaughter in all weather conditions before they’re hung upside down and their throats are slit—often while they’re still conscious—so that their feathers can be stuffed into (and poke out of) jackets.”
Morrissey urged Canada Goose to "act more like its namesake (e.g., smart, brave, and willing to fly off in a new direction) by making the bold ethical choice to remove coyote fur and down feathers from its parkas.”
The ex-Smiths frontman, in conjunction with PETA, said he will collect signatures on a petition at each of the nine shows he is performing in Canada, beginning Sunday night in Vancouver. The petition will be delivered to Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss at the end of the tour.
MORE: Morrissey Ends Canadian Boycott For Tour
Although majority-owned by U.S.-based Bain Capital, Canada Goose clothing is manufactured in Winnipeg and Toronto.
Morrissey is touring Canada 13 years after calling it “the cruellest and most self-serving nation” and vowing never to perform here until the end of the annual commercial seal hunt. In 2006, he urged fans to "boycott Canadian goods" and, in two years later, called Canada “a place that people such as I couldn’t bear to visit.”
But, last September, he said his “protest against [Canada’s] savage and Neanderthal annual Baby Seal Kill is entirely because my stance was ultimately of no use and helped no one. My voice was drowned out by the merciless swing of spiked axes crushing the heads of babies.”
“On my return to Canada I feel that I can be of more use by making sizeable donations to animal protection groups in each city that I play.”