PETA Descends On Hermès Stores Around the World, Demands Company Drop Exotic Skins

For Immediate Release:
September 8, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

After the Kindness Project released video footage showing crocodiles on Hermès-owned farms in Australia confined to barren concrete pens, electrocuted, knifed, shot, and mutilated with screwdrivers, PETA fired off a letter to Hermès calling out the company’s clearly false claims that it holds “the highest scientific standards for animal welfare” and held provocative exhibitions at the brand’s Paris, London, and New York flagship stores, the last of which featured women holding mock croc handbags dripping with “blood.”

“No purse is worth an animal’s agonizing death,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Hermès to listen to the outcry against cruelty to crocodiles and bag exotic skins.”

The video—which comes as Hermès gears up to build what would be Australia’s largest crocodile farm, set to hold and kill up to 50,000 individuals—echoes PETA’s exposé of Hermès suppliers, which found that workers shot reptiles in the head, cut into the animals as some struggled to escape, and stabbed still-conscious animals to try to dislocate their vertebrae. Reptiles continued to move their legs and tails several minutes after these slaughter attempts.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.