Video: Pythons Bashed With Hammers, Impaled on Hooks for Gucci’s Parent Company

For Immediate Release:
March 12, 2024

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

New York – Released today, following a story published by CBS News, a new PETA Asia investigation into two python farms that supply skins to Caravel, a tannery operated by Kering, owner of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, reveals workers pinning struggling pythons down by the neck, bashing them in the head with a hammer, punching metal hooks through their heads, and inflating their bodies with water—even as the animals continue to move about—before skinning them. PETA is demanding that the company stop selling accessories produced from the slaughter of wild animals, including ones made of snake and lizard skins. Video footage of the investigation is available here.

PETA Asia investigators visited Sisatchanalai Python Farm and Closed-Cycle Breeding International (CCBI), which confirmed that it has a contract with Caravel for 5,000 skins in 2024. The pythons were housed in small, barren boxes and cages, and on one farm, the owner of CCBI pointed PETA Asia’s investigator to an emaciated snake, noting that the reptile likely “didn’t eat for a long time” and that “they should get rid of it. … It’s better to kill.”

“These snakes spend their short lives confined to tiny, filthy boxes before being bashed with a hammer, pierced through the skull, and skinned,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is shining a harsh light on Kering’s disgusting cruelty to show why consumers should never buy products from the barbaric reptile-skins industry.”

Despite the abuse documented at its suppliers, Kering continues to tout its “Animal Welfare Standards,” which specify that animals must have “room to move around freely” and be “managed to promote good health and treated immediately should disease or injury be discovered” as well as requiring “humane handling at end of life”—all claims proved false by PETA Asia’s investigations.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.