Why Down is feathers and clusters made from the soft under plumage of geese or ducks. To enforce robust quality-of-life requirements for the birds who supply these feathers, and especially to help protect against force-feeding and live-plucking, all virgin down that Patagonia uses is traced from farm to shelf, so that the birds who supply it are protected. The Responsible Down Standard.
Yet the way some farmers harvest this fluffy material might make birders uncomfortable. The vast majority of the 270,000 metric tons of commercial down produced each year is a byproduct of goose and duck meat industries in Asia and Europe, where the birds might be live. Traceable Down Standard, sometimes known as Global Traceable Down Standard is an animal welfare standard developed by independent certification organization NSF International, available to companies that use duck or goose down in their products.
It encompasses animal welfare, including the unacceptable practices of force feeding live plucking, and molt harvesting along with traceability, from. Traceable Down All of the virgin down we purchase is a by-product of the meat industry and comes from independently audited sources. In addition to virgin down, we also source recycled down from post-consumer sources.
In our virgin duck-down supply chains, birds are raised for their meat and slaughtered at 45-60 days of age. In our goose-down supply chain, birds are typically sent to slaughter. We consider the Advanced Global TDS the strongest animal.
Ensuring down is fully traceable back to its source is a way of making sure that the duck & geese farmers adhere to the standards that a brand want to set for the production of the down they are using. As a result of this tireless effort, all Patagonia down products now contain only 100% Traceable Down. All of the down in all of our products can be traced back to birds that were never force-fed, never live-plucked - and we don't allow blended down, period.
NSF says the resulting new Global Traceable Down Standard represents the strongest public animal welfare standard available to companies that use duck or goose down in their products. A lucrative by-product of the food industry, duck and goose down is prized for its high warmth-to-weight ratio. Yet waterfowl are subjected to some objectively galling practises, particularly live-plucking, in which feathers are painfully stripped from a living bird, as well as the controversial fattening tactic of force.
The Responsible Down Standard aims to improve the welfare of ducks and geese used for down The Responsible Down Standard (RDS) is a voluntary standard that incentivizes the down and feather industry to treat ducks and geese more humanely and rewards organizations leading the way. The standard also gives companies and consumers a way to know more about the origin of materials in the products.