PETA Member to Confront Louis Vuitton Executives at Annual Meeting
After Exposés Reveal Crocodiles Skinned Alive, Ostriches Restrained, and Live-Plucking Devices, PETA Will Push Brand to End Its Complicity in Cruelty
For Immediate Release:
April 12, 2017
Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382
Stop selling bags and other items made from the skins of crocodiles and ostriches: That’s the message a PETA representative will take to Louis Vuitton’s parent company, LVMH, at its annual shareholder meeting in Paris tomorrow.
When: Thursday, April 13, 10 a.m.
Where: Carrousel du Louvre, 99 Rue de Rivoli, Paris
In order to put pressure on the company, PETA bought a stake in LVMH after the group’s exposé last year of Vietnam crocodile farms—including two that have supplied skins to a tannery owned by LVMH—revealed that reptiles are cut apart while still alive and thrashing in agony. Footage also showed that thousands of crocodiles are confined to concrete cages, some smaller than their own bodies, and that workers ram metal rods down their spines as blood pours from their wounds.
“PETA has exposed cruelty at reptile farms on three continents, and the story is always the same: grim confinement and violent deaths,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “LVMH can no longer get away with turning a blind eye to the immense animal suffering that’s part of the production process for its bags, watchbands, and shoes.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part that “animals are not ours to wear”—also obtained eyewitness video footage last year showing that ostriches, who are used for the bumpy-textured or “goose bump” skin purses sold by LVMH and other designer brands, are kept in barren dirt feedlots before being trucked to slaughterhouses. Once there, workers forcibly restrain birds on the kill floor, electrically stun them, and then slit their throats in full view of their terrified flockmates.
For images of PETA’s previous demonstrations against LVMH, please click here.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
