buying goose down

“there was a thread a while ago, "what's up with down?" or some other such silliness. i can't find it using the search, but someone posted that they had bought a pound of 800 fill down for $50. i thought i had bookmarked the site, but i guess i didn't.

can that person please step forward and tell me where they bought the down?”

“http://www.thebackpacker.com/trailtalk/thread.php?id=19748&age=999

I am to lazy to make a link but this is the thread.”

“A pound of 800 fill down for $50 sounds too good to be true, to me. At least at the retail level. Thru-hiker.com charges $24 per 3 ounces. I bought some from Thru-hiker and it was very good down.”

“go synthetic”

“thank you, twigeater! for others interested, the source was www.midwestfeather.com.”

“Down" is the soft underfeathering often plucked out of live geese who are raised for food. In many European countries, geese are allowed to mature during the first eight or nine weeks of life. Reaching adulthood, they are divided by color. Gray geese are caged and force-fed--a funnel is inserted into their throats and a salty, fatty corn mash is forced down it, up to six pounds a day--until they are overweight and their livers have ballooned to four or more times the normal size. Then they are killed for pâté de foie gras.(1) White geese are plucked repeatedly to supply filling for products such as comforters, pillows, and ski parkas.(2)

Plucking the geese causes them considerable pain and distress. Four or five times in their lives, they will squirm as a plucker tears out five ounces of their feathers. A skilled plucker can handle 100 birds a day. After the last plucking, the geese have five weeks to grow more feathers before they are sent through a machine that plucks their longest feathers. From there they go to the slaughterhouse.(3) At least one major U.S. down seller, the Company Store (500 Company Store Rd., La Crosse, WI 54601-4477), buys down from Hungary and other European countries.

In North America, ducks and geese are hunted and raised for their feathers (and for food). People also gather eider down from the nests of female eider ducks, who pluck the down from their breasts to line their nests and cover their eggs. Gathering the soft feathers can kill unhatched ducklings.(4)

Apart from the cruelty involved in its production, down has drawbacks as a cold-weather insulator that synthetic insulators do not have. Not only is down expensive, it also loses its insulating ability when wet, whereas the insulating capabilities of cruelty-free synthetic fillers are retained in all weather.(5)”

“An interesting troll alaska - I will try to feel their pain next time my bag loses a feather....”

“Where are the references that were cited with numbers?”

“"it also loses its insulating ability when wet, whereas the insulating capabilities of cruelty-free synthetic fillers are retained in all weather.(5)"

Synthetic fillers are also very cold when wet. The synthetic advantage is the ability to wring it iut and dry it easily.

But most synthetics are by products of oil.

So by touting synthetic fillers Alaska the troll is supporting the war in Iraq and drilling in the ANWR as we need the oil to make synthetic fillers to save the ducks.

Gotta love logic”