Photos: Vegan Activist Dumps ‘Guts’ Outside Hermès in Crusade Against Crocodile Skin
London – Today, wearing a mock-croc suit and matching boots, famed vegan activist Tash Peterson (aka “V-gan Booty”) drenched herself in “blood” and “guts” from a “Birkin bag” reading, “Hermès: Dump Exotic Skins,” in front of Hermès’ flagship London store, in a push for the luxury retailer to drop reptile skins.
The action follows the recent passing of Jane Birkin, who once asked for her name to be removed from Hermès’ crocodile-skin Birkin bag due to concerns over cruelty to animals. Her death also prompted PETA to send an urgent letter to Hermès urging the brand to retire the handbag and adopt a policy prohibiting the use of exotic animal skins so that no more wildlife is killed in her name.
Images are available here.
Footage of farms owned by Hermès and its suppliers has revealed that crocodiles are confined to cramped cages and small concrete pits filled with filthy water before they are electrocuted, dragged, and mutilated – some while still conscious.
Peterson’s home country, Australia, is the world’s main producer of saltwater crocodile skin, exporting 90% of it internationally. Hermès already owns the majority of the crocodile farms in the Northern Territory, but it is planning to expand its operations further by building Australia’s biggest crocodile farm to date and imprisoning up to 50,000 animals there at a time.
“Crocodiles are crudely bludgeoned, gutted, and skinned alive to make Hermès bags,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA and Tash Peterson are calling for an end to this cruelty by showing shoppers the blood and the suffering behind the merchandise.”
“Crocodiles and other living, feeling beings do not voluntarily give up their skin – it’s ripped from their bodies out of greed,” says Peterson. “I’m calling on consumers to stop buying leather made from animals’ skin and on companies like Hermès to stop peddling it.”
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Contact:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]