Why Was This Compassionate Shareholder Barred From Prada’s Annual Meeting?
In Milan last week, Prada refused to allow a dissenting voice to be heard at its annual meeting. PETA US purchased a single share in Prada last month, specifically in order to try and influence company policy from the inside. But the fashion house refused to allow PETA UK’s representative, who was acting as a proxy, into the meeting today, or to listen to demands that the fashion house stop selling items made from dead ostriches’ skins.
Outside Prada’s shareholders meeting in Milan
Earlier this year, a shocking exposé revealed that young ostriches are marched into slaughterhouses, electrically shocked and have their throats slit so that their skins can be used to produce pockmarked bags that fashion houses such as Prada and Hermès sell for thousands of pounds.
Sometimes, working from the inside can be an effective way to bring about change for animals. So PETA decided to attend the meeting to remind Prada board members that such appalling cruelty isn’t just bad for animals – it’s also bad for business. Once they know how these products are really made, most people want nothing to do with them.
Outside the meeting, a different kind of protest was underway. Italian singer Daniela Martani posed wearing a dress designed to look like a dead ostrich, as a reminder of the beautiful, sensitive birds who are being butchered for fashion.
A week later in Paris, a PETA US representative did enter Hermès’ annual meeting in order to ask:
“Behind every ostrich-, crocodile-, or alligator-skin Birkin bag is a short, miserable life of deprivation capped off by a violent death. Knowing of the suffering that animals endure for these bags, when will Hermès stop using exotic animal skins?“
Please join us in urging Prada and Hermès to scrap exotic skins. Send their CEOs a message here.
