The origin of DOWN CODEX®
- Responsibility
Manufacturers have always focused on the quality and performance of their products, but until relatively recently, brands knew more about the products they were selling than what they made from, and this was particularly true for down and feather products. Whether manufacturing a sleeping bag, duvet, or down jacket, brands had little knowledge about where their down came from.
Speaking to Tom Strobl, Managing Director of Mountain Equipment in Germany, and his recollections of fifteen years ago, it now seems remarkable:
“I only knew about the quality of the down: what fill power it had, the cleanliness, and the mix of down and feathers. About the processing - under what circumstances the animals lived and how the down was produced at the end - I knew nothing, like every other brand at that time.
For the last 33 years, I have lived mainly from the sales of down sleeping bags and down jackets. It took me quite a while to think about the animals that produce down. Shame on me. I then realised that I could make a much bigger difference [to animal welfare] if I do my very best to help establish ethical sourcing for our down.”
This attitude inspired the development of DOWN CODEX®.
Early problems and positive partnerships
We decided to learn about the origins of our down and the living conditions of the ducks and geese in our supply chains. Dr Jane Turnbull, former CSR & Sustainability Project Manager at the European Outdoor Group, noted the challenges brands face, including struggles with even basic material testing and auditing. Time and resource limitations were significant obstacles, but the complexity of the supply chains was the biggest issue. Dr Katy Stevens pointed out that tracing down supply chains is challenging due to their varied levels, such as breeding farms and hatcheries. There isn't a typical down supply chain, making meaningful assessments of animal welfare and traceability difficult.
Supply chain complexity was a major challenge for us as a small brand attempting to influence a vast, multi-billion-dollar industry. For Mountain Equipment, understanding our supply chains would be demanding, but our fate would soon become inextricably linked with those of the entire industry.
Mountain Equipment are a team of product specialists, fabric experts and climbers and in the early days of DOWN CODEX, we knew relatively little about the specifics of goose and duck welfare or about auditing supply chains. To address this, we sought help from the International Down and Feather Laboratory and researched the RSPCA’s Freedom Food Initiative to establish a framework for animal welfare criteria.
Image taken during a Mountain Equipment visit to our Chinese down supply chain, 2024
Shockwaves and the rise of DOWN CODEX
As DOWN CODEX gained traction, shocking headlines about down-sourcing rocked the outdoor industry, highlighting issues such as live plucking, force feeding, and animals living in terrible conditions. With major brands implicated and influential newspapers amplifying the story, ethical sourcing of down became a focal point, intertwining the DOWN CODEX narrative with the broader evolution of the down industry.
We found ourselves leading meetings about ethical down sourcing with participants from huge international brands, massive down and feather companies, and vocal animal rights groups. By our own admission, we weren’t experts, but we were ahead of most of the field and wanted to use what we’d found to further the wider cause.
The Director of Standards at Textile Exchange at the time, Ashley Gill, explained:
“… Mountain Equipment were really generous in sharing what worked well about their system. …The fact that companies like Mountain Equipment had been asking difficult questions and had experience gave us a perspective we would not have had. We could not use the excuse ‘it can’t be done’, because Mountain Equipment had already proved that improved verification and chain of custody was possible.”
We still collaborate with other brands and organisations and have shared our practices with numerous auditing and certification bodies and other ‘rival’ brands. In animal welfare, rivals shouldn’t really exist.
Introducing Trace Your Down
It is important that customers can trust the down in their product, both in ethics and quality. To the customer, fill power has long been regarded as the best measure of down quality, with a higher number indicating better down, so to give an extra level of information, we began an ambitious project to sew traceability codes into products. These enabled customers to find out where their down came from, and its exact quality. We remain unique among major down brands in offering this service.
Image taken during a Mountain Equipment visit to our Chinese down supply chain, 2024
Influence
In response to the backlash over live plucking that arose in 2012, DOWN CODEX soon gained allies in other down welfare and traceability schemes. These included the Responsible Down Standard (RDS), the Traceable Down Standard (TDS), and Downpass. While influenced by DOWN CODEX, these standards strengthened the industry and were seen as allies rather than competitors.
For Tom Strobl, it’s something he holds dear: “The existence of other down welfare standards is the thing that I am most proud of in my business life: that our Down Codex® influenced a whole industry. It is the best thing that could happen.”
However, the growth of numerous different standards isn’t entirely positive, as it is confusing for consumers, difficult to keep track of the differences between them, and auditing supply chains to numerous different standards can become tiresome for suppliers.
In 2022, with the release of RDS version 3.0, we realised that the welfare standards of RDS met those of DOWN CODEX, and so we became an RDS-certified brand. RDS is a third-party certification with stringent chain of custody requirements, providing a solid framework for our down products. While RDS covers audits, traceability, and animal welfare, DOWN CODEX manages our virgin down sourcing, quality monitoring, and transparency regarding fill power reports. The quality of down encompasses factors such as fill power, origins, and welfare, all essential for high-performance down products.
We are proud of the history of DOWN CODEX and the influence it’s had on the industry, but improving welfare and transparency in supply chains is a long and complex journey, and we will continue to push for improvements wherever we can.
