‘Bloody’ PETA ‘Reptile’ in Calgary to Protest Hermès Horror: Live Animals Sawed Open on Supplier’s Farm
Bodypainted ‘Crocodile’ Will Highlight Miserable Lives and Deaths of Reptiles Who Become ‘Luxury’ Watchbands and Birkin Bags
For Immediate Release:
August 10, 2015
Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382
Shoppers at a busy Calgary intersection will get an eyeful on Tuesday as a PETA “reptile” lies in a pool of “blood” outside retailer Holt Renfrew’s storefront. Painted to look like a crocodile and flanked by a banner proclaiming, “Hermès: Accessories to Murder,” the protester will call on consumers not to buy the skins of tormented animals, whose plight PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—brought to light in a recent investigation that was reported by CBSNews.com.
Where: Holt Renfrew, northwest corner of Eighth Avenue S.W. and Fourth Street S.W., Calgary
When: Tuesday, August 11, 12 p.m.
“PETA’s exposé of Hermès suppliers in the U.S. and Africa reveals that every Hermès watchband or Birkin bag means a living, feeling being experienced a miserable life and a ghastly death,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “People pay thousands of dollars for such accessories, but the reptiles on these cruel and disgusting factory farms are paying the real price.”
PETA’s investigator documented the mistreatment of alligators on a filthy Texas farm that supplies Hermès. After a captive-bolt gun at the facility was believed to be malfunctioning, the manager told a worker to cut into hundreds of live and fully conscious alligators and try to dislocate their vertebrae and then shove a metal rod up their spinal columns. Some reptiles were writhing minutes after their necks were sawed open with a knife or box cutter in a crude effort to slaughter them—all for $2,000 watchbands. Footage captured in Zimbabwe showed that thousands of crocodiles were crowded into unnatural, barren concrete pits for $40,000-plus Birkin and Kelly bags.
Broadcast-quality footage is available here, and photos are available here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
