Louis Vuitton Executives to Face Scrutiny Over Exotic-Skins Sales
PETA Exposés Reveal That Ostriches’ Throats Are Slit, Crocodiles Are Skinned Alive for Company’s Belts and Bags
For Immediate Release:
April 17, 2019
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
Given that Louis Vuitton’s parent company, LVMH, is well aware of the extreme cruelty that goes into its items, when will it stop using exotic-animal skins? That’s the question that a PETA representative will ask at LVMH’s annual meeting in Paris tomorrow.
When: Thursday, April 18, 10:30 a.m.
Where: Carrousel du Louvre, 99 Rue de Rivoli, Paris
PETA bought a stake in LVMH in 2017 in order to pressure the company to end its use of animal skins after an exposé of crocodile farms in Vietnam—including two that claim to have supplied skins to a tannery owned by LVMH—showed reptiles lying motionless in thousands of cramped concrete cells, some narrower than their own bodies. Workers hacked into thrashing crocodiles’ necks and rammed metal rods down their spines as blood poured from the wounds.
“Every exotic-skin accessory sold by Louis Vuitton represents the hideously gruesome death of a sensitive animal,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on LVMH to stop supporting the torment and killing of ostriches, crocodiles, and other beautiful wild animals for bags, watchbands, and shoes.”
PETA also obtained eyewitness video footage 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 the slaughterhouse. 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. Their feathers are then torn from their still-warm bodies, and they’re skinned and dismembered.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
