Victory! Samuel Hubbard Bans Exotic Skins After PETA Appeal

For Immediate Release:
March 10, 2021

Contact:
Tapi Mbundure 202-483-7382

After PETA Asia’s new exotic-skins investigation exposed widespread cruelty to snakes and crocodiles in Vietnam, Samuel Hubbard Shoe Company has just confirmed to PETA that it no longer uses exotic skins in its designs. In thanks, PETA is sending the company a box of vegan alligator-shaped chocolates.

“Alligators, snakes, and crocodiles don’t ask that we think of them as cute or cuddly—they just want us to leave them in peace,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Samuel Hubbard made a compassionate choice by ditching an industry that inflates, beats, and electroshocks sensitive animals, and PETA encourages shoppers to stick to retailers that reject exotic skins.”

PETA Asia’s investigation into a farm in Vietnam that supplies snakeskin for use in the global leather industry reveals widespread cruelty to snakes, including sealing their mouths and anuses with rubber bands and then inflating them to death with an air compressor, crushing their heart and causing severe pain.

PETA Asia also recently obtained new video footage from a farmer demonstrating the slaughter of crocodiles, showing piles of animals who’d been wrapped in bags, their mouths tied shut, so they couldn’t move. A worker walked on top of them and crudely stunned them, then other workers stabbed them with a metal blade. Despite the attempt to stun them, they were still seen moving as workers attempted to kill them.

Samuel Hubbard joins Brooks Brothers, Jil Sander, Chanel, Diane von Furstenberg, HUGO BOSS, Victoria Beckham, Vivienne Westwood, Phillips-Van Heusen, and many other companies in banning exotic skins.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.