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The Australian crocodile industry supplies “luxury” fashion brands, but there is nothing flashy about what happens to crocodiles who are slaughtered for their skins.
New eyewitness footage provided by the Kindness Project shows Australian crocodiles undergoing horrific brutality from the moment they hatch to the moment a screwdriver is inserted into their heads to hack into their brains – all for bags, belts and boots.
The video documents four farms in the Northern Territory – Australia’s largest crocodile leather producer – all associated with the Hermès fashion brand.
In huge warehouses, thousands of crocodiles are chained to barren concrete pens with little more room than their body length.
When they are 2 or 3 years old – this is only a fraction of their natural lifespan – they are electrocuted and dragged out of the paddocks while their bodies convulse. The workers then shoot them in the head with a pistol with captive bolts and sever their spine with a knife. Then a screwdriver is inserted into the cut wound, designed to break into the crocodile’s brain. Some crocodiles moved for more than a minute after being done to them.
At least three crocodiles must endure this suffering in order to one Hermès bag.
PETA and our international affiliates have previously exposed atrocities on reptile farms in Texas, Zimbabwe and Vietnam, and the story is always the same: grim, close confinement and violent death.
Crocodile conservation
The crocodile farming industry in Australia is positioning itself as an animal welfare investor, but that claim does not hold water.
From 1945 to 1971, crocodile populations were exterminated in the Northern Territory because they were hunted for their hide. Fortunately, crocodiles were protected in 1971 and their numbers have stabilized since then.
The crocodile farming industry loves to take responsibility for this, arguing that “collecting” (stealing) eggs from natural habitats and raising crocodiles on industrial farms makes people in local communities more likely to live near predators because they make money. …
Crocodiles can be dangerous to those who enter their territory, but they are also living things that feel pain and fear. They are caring, considerate parents and often have fun blowing bubbles. If left to themselves, they can outlive most people.
Capturing and raising native animals just to slaughter them for their hide is hardly conservation and certainly unethical. The growth in the saltwater crocodile population is a result of the hunting ban, not because people thought they could profit from raising and skinning them.
Exotic hides and zoonoses
As crocodiles raised on farms for their hide are kept together in highly unsanitary conditions – sometimes on top of each other in pits of putrid water – environmental experts warn that the next pandemic could come from the fashion industry.
Similar to the wet market that the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, crocodile farms provide a breeding ground for many zoonotic pathogens, including Salmonella, Vibrios, Aeromonas spp, Pseudomonas spp. And if, Trichinella and West Nile Virus have all been found to be carried by crocodiles and can be transmitted to humans.
Hermès plans to create the largest crocodile farm in Australia
Australia accounts for 60% of the world trade in saltwater crocodile skins, 90% of which is exported internationally. Hermès plans to expand its operations here by building the largest farm in Australia and imprisoning up to 50,000 animals at a time.
This is happening at a time when exotic skins are going out of fashion. Chanel, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Mulberry, HUGO BOSS and Victoria Beckham have banned crocodile and other exotic skins from their collections.
Hermès should invest in humane, sustainable and forward-looking projects rather than building new factory farms to torture animals and create a breeding ground for new pandemics. Join us and urge the brand to ditch exotic leather right now:
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