PETA Representative to Confront Prada Executives at Annual Meeting

Group Will Urge Company to Stop Sale of Exotic-Animal Skins After Exposés Reveal Ostriches’ Throats Are Slit and Crocodiles Are Skinned Alive

For Immediate Release:
April 26, 2018

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Stop selling bags and other items made from the skins of slaughtered exotic animals: That’s the message that a PETA representative will take to Prada at its annual meeting in Milan tomorrow. Today, PETA U.K. held a protest outside the company’s Milan store featuring a nearly nude demonstrator painted to look like a snake and holding a sign that reads, “Prada: Shed the Cruelty.” A photo is available here.

“Prada knows full well that animals are hacked apart and skinned alive for its crocodile shoes and snakeskin handbags,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on the company to stop profiting from animals’ miserable lives and painful deaths by ending sales of exotic skins in favor of fabulous, innovative, and luxurious vegan materials.”

As has been exposed by PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—in the skins industry, ostriches are jammed into stun boxes and shocked before their throats are slit; crocodiles are kept in tiny, filthy pits and metal rods are shoved down their spines; alligators’ necks are hacked open; and snakes are nailed to trees and skinned alive.

At Prada’s annual meeting last year, Italian singer Daniela Martani led a protest outside the building wearing an “ostrich corpse” dress and surrounded by life-size “ostriches.” PETA, who bought stock in the company in 2016 in order to pressure it from the inside to end its use of animal skins, has staged colorful demonstrations at countless Prada stores around the world since the launch of its first crocodile-skin investigation in 2016.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.