Exposed: Crocodiles and Alligators Factory-Farmed for Hermès 'Luxury' Goods (2024)

Thousands of crocodiles are crammed into concrete pits and alligators packed into filthy pools—all killed for their skin before even reaching adulthood.

In Winnie, Texas, there’s an alligator factory that sends skins to an Hermès-owned tannery, and there, PETA’s investigator found alligators kept in fetid water and dank, dark sheds without sunshine, fresh air, clean water, or even basic medical care. At just 1 year old, alligators are shot with a captive-bolt gun or crudely cut into while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain. Our investigator documented the following actions by workers there:

• • Repeatedly shooting alligators in the head with a captive-bolt gun

• • Cutting into more than 500 conscious alligators as some struggled to escape

• • Stabbing conscious alligators to try to dislocate their vertebrae—even though a manager had admitted that “reptiles will continue to live” after that

The investigator saw alligators continuing to move their legs and tails in the bleed rack and in bloody ice bins several minutes after their attempted slaughter.
After the alligators’ miserable lives and sometimes slow, gruesome deaths, their skins are sent to France and made into “luxury” items such as watchbands.

At the facility of one of the world’s largest exporters of Nile crocodile skins in Zimbabwe, tens of thousands of crocodiles are confined to concrete pits from birth to slaughter. They are deprived of the opportunity to engage in natural behaviors including digging tunnels, playing, protecting their young, or using tools to hunt as they would do in nature.

In their natural habitats, Nile crocodiles can live to be up to 80 years old, but at this facility they are slaughtered at the age of around 3.

Many belly skins are sent to an Hermès-owned tannery where they end up becoming “luxury” items such as “Birkin” and “Kelly” handbags that can cost $50,000 or more.It takes two or three crocodiles to make just one handbag.

Ostriches are killed so that their skin can be turned into Hermès products, too. PETA investigators filmed slaughterhouse workers forcibly restraining each bird, electrically stunning them, and then cutting their throats. Moments later, workers tore the feathers from the birds’ still-warm bodies and skinned them.

In light of this damning evidence of abuse to animals used for “luxury” products, please use the form below to demand that Hermès stop selling items made from animals’ skins.