Burberry to Face Pressure From PETA at Annual Meeting

For Immediate Release:
July 13, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

“Will Burberry be true to its commitment to be ‘a force for good in the world’ and stop sourcing exotic skins?” That’s the question a PETA U.K. representative will ask on behalf of PETA—which purchased stock in the fashion company last year during the COVID-19 market downturn—at Burberry’s annual meeting in London on Wednesday.

“Kind customers want mock croc and fake snake, not a sensitive animal’s stolen skin,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Burberry to join Calvin Klein, Carolina Herrera, Chanel, and other designers in giving exotic skins the boot.”

Burberry policy currently allows the company to use “Ayers, python, and alligator” skins. A recent PETA Asia exposé shows that workers cut a hole in snakes’ heads or tails and inflate them with an air compressor, causing them to suffocate to death. Alligators are commonly kept in fetid water inside dank, dark sheds until workers hack their necks open and shove a metal rod up into their brains, often while they’re still conscious. Conservation experts have also warned that confining and slaughtering wild animals in unsanitary conditions creates breeding grounds for viruses like the novel coronavirus.

Following a vigorous PETA campaign, Burberry banned fur and angora in 2018.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, the human-supremacist view that animals are nothing more than commodities. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.