What is Down?
Down and feathers are the plumage of birds, down being the soft underplumage, mostly from the breast. For the quality of filling required by the outdoor trade, landfowl (poultry) can be ignored: waterfowl (ducks and geese) are the sole source.
Down and feathers are a by-product of the food industry. When the birds are killed to eat, the plumage is plucked off, processed and sold separately. The exceptions to this are Hungarian geese, which sometimes have their down plucked off during their lifetime, and eiderduck, which are unique in this trade in being both wild birds and protected, so that the down has to be hand-gathered from their nests.
Find out where down comes from...
In view of the recent concerns raised about the plucking of down from live birds, PHD can reassure its customers categorically that all the downs we use come from dead birds and none of it is live plucked.
