Owning a Birkin bag is a sign that you have obscene amounts of money to spend–the “cheap” ones cost $10,000, the expensive celeb-worthy ones will set you back $100,000 US.
But now the French actress who inspired the Hermès bag after griping that she needed a larger bag to hold all her stuff has disavowed the ionic brand. (Frankly, we don’t like the brand so much we’re not going to refer to them anymore after this and they will for the rest of the article be known only as the GENERIC DESIGNERS)
Birkin sent a statement saying that was disassociating herself from the bag.
Having been alerted to the cruel practices endured by crocodiles during their slaughter for the production of [GENERIC DESIGNER] bags carrying my name …, I have asked [GENERIC DESIGNER] Group to rename the Birkin until better practices responding to international norms can be implemented for the production of this bag.
VIDEOS SHOW ANIMALS IN DISTRESS
PETA undertook an investigation that revealed the grisly source of the [GENERIC DESIGNER] accessories are living, feeling animals.
“[S]ome of whom were painfully mutilated and left to die,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA will be campaigning outside the company, and, as a shareholder, also working from the inside to demand a ban on exotic animal–skin accessories, including crocodile-skin bags and alligator-skin watchbands.
PETA obtained video footage from two farms that supply [GENERIC DESIGNER]-owned tanneries—including Padenga Holdings Ltd. in Zimbabwe, a company that operates one of the largest Nile crocodile–farming operations in the world, and Lone Star Alligator Farms in Winnie, Texas.
TANNERIES IN TEXAS, ZIMBABWE
PETA’s exposé revealed that workers at Lone Star rammed metal rods up alligators’ spinal columns after slitting the back of the conscious, struggling animals’ necks with a knife. Some animals survived and were seen moving in ice-water bins minutes afterward.
The video also shows thousands of crocodiles crammed into concrete pits at a factory farm in Kariba, Zimbabwe.
On the heels of a PETA exposé, the animal rights organization became a shareholder of [GENERIC DESIGNER] International on the Paris stock exchange to put pressure on the company to end its sale of exotic-animal skins, which are made into watch straps and bags.
