Push for Exotic-Skins Ban to Head to Prada’s Boardroom

As a Shareholder, PETA Will Ask the Retailer to Ditch ‘Luxury’ Items Made of Ostriches’ and Reptiles’ Skins

For Immediate Release:
May 30, 2017

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

Behind every ostrich-, crocodile-, and alligator-skin bag is a short, miserable life of deprivation and a violent death. That’s the message that a PETA representative will take to Prada’s annual meeting on Wednesday in a call for the company to stop selling exotic-skin bags, watchbands, shoes, and other items.

When:    Wednesday, May 31, 12 noon

Where:    Via A. Fogazzaro n. 28, Milan

“No sensitive living being should be crammed into a filthy pit and hacked apart while still alive,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Prada to take a stand against suffering by ending the use of exotic skins in its collections.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—has released a video exposé of the world’s largest ostrich-slaughter companies, which supply Prada, among others. The footage reveals that young birds are kept on barren dirt feedlots before they are crowded into trucks, hauled to slaughterhouses, and electrically shocked and their throats are slit. Moments later, their feathers are torn out of the birds’ still-warm bodies and they are skinned and dismembered.

PETA exposés of the reptile-skins industry revealed further cruelty. At a crocodile farm in Vietnam, tens of thousands of crocodiles were kept in small, filthy concrete enclosures, some narrower than the length of their bodies. Alligators at a farm in Texas were kept in fetid water in dank, dark sheds before their necks were hacked open and metal rods were shoved into their heads in an attempt to scramble their brains, often while they were fully conscious.

Photos of past demonstrations during Milan Fashion Week and outside Prada stores are available here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.