Hasta La Creative!

You’ll never think about down jackets or Blue Oyster Cult the same way again after watching Patagonia’s darkly informative new video set to the tune of “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”

In the rather Chipotle-esque clip, we follow the journey of a naive young goose who’s trying to enjoy some time on the ski slopes when a brush with the Grim Reaper turns his whole day upside down. The jacket-clad goose (don’t overthink it) sees each step of how down feathers are harvested. As you can guess, it’s not super fun for the geese involved.

Patagonia is using the video to announce its new commitment to only using “100% traceable down.” That means the brand tracks its suppliers from hatch to harvest, ensuring that feathers are never plucked from live birds.

Much like Chipotle, the Omnivore’s Dilemma morality here stops quite a bit short of PETA standards. The geese plucked by Patagonia are, of course, killed in the process, with most of their bodies being used for food:

“Only birds raised for their meat under strict non force-fed, non live-plucked requirements are slaughtered here. Following the Traceable Down Standard, slaughterhouses observe best practices for animal welfare including the transportation, holding and slaughtering of birds.”

In usual Patagonia style, the transparency-obsessed company has an exhaustive timeline showing how it reached the 100% traceable down milestone.

So now you can at least rest assured that your Patagonia jacket was made from humanely butchered animals who weren’t flayed alive or force-fed. But that cartoon goose wearing the byproduct of his dead brethren is still a bit of monster.