Media Alert: ‘Bloody’ PETA ‘Reptile’ 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’ Birkin Bags and Watchbands

For Immediate Release:
June 30, 2015

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Shoppers at a busy Beverly Hills intersection will get an eyeful on Wednesday as a PETA “reptile”—Bonnie-Jill Laflin, a model and former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader—lies in a pool of “blood” outside retailer Hermès’ storefront. Painted to look like crocodiles and flanked by a banner proclaiming, “Hermès: Accessories to Murder,” protesters will screen footage of PETA’s recent investigation that was reported by CBSNews.com.

Where:           Hermès, 434 N. Rodeo Dr., Beverly Hills

When:             Wednesday, July 1, 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 E. 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—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—revealed the mistreatment of alligators on a 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 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 attempt to slaughter them—all for $2,000 watchbands. Footage captured in Zimbabwe showed that hundreds 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.