Today animal rights organisations GAIA and PETA organized an action against Hermès. Because the French “luxury” brand produces and sells handbags, belts and watchbands that cause immense animal suffering. This became clear after a recent expose from PETA that showed one farm manager sawing open alligators' necks, leaving them still moving minutes after the crude attempt to slaughter them. Face of the action was Belgian model and TV personality Lesley-Ann Poppe, she was body painted as a crocodile.
The joint action from GAIA and PETA was at the boutique of Hermès on the Boulevard de Waterloo in Brussels. Both animal rights organisations wanted to shed light on the facts that every year thousands of crocodiles and alligators live miserable lives on squalid breeding farms, from Texas to Zimbabwe, where they are packed in concrete pins or reeking pools, and often killed after one year. All in the name of “luxury” fashion.
Undercover investigation
Hermès has several accessories from crocodile and alligator leather. Like belts, watch bands and handbags. “To produce one handbag up to four crocodiles are need”, says GAIA-president Michel Vandenbosch. “Most people who buy a Hermès handbag don’t realise that the production methods often come together with cruel practises against animals.”
A recent undercover investigation from PETA is the breeding facility that Hermès works with shows that crocodiles and alligators are not only kept in horrible conditions – without day light, fresh air, proper water of medical care – but also that they are also slaughtered in a very amateur and violent way, causing many of the animals to suffer for many hours. Also after the ‘slaughter’ they sometimes keep on living for minutes.
"PETA's exposé reveals the grisly source of Hermès' 'luxury' accessories – living, feeling animals who were mutilated and left to die slowly and in pain on squalid farms", says PETA Director Mimi Bekhechi. "We're calling on Hermès to stop profiting from these animals' miserable lives and deaths by taking exotic skins off the shelves for good."
Click here for more information about the investigation.
