OPPOSITION TO CRUELTY TO CROCODILES HEADS TO LOUIS VUITTON'S BOARDROOM

PETA US Purchases Stock in Retailer's Parent Company to Push for an End to Exotic-Skin Sales From Inside the Corporation

London – After a PETA exposé revealed that crocodiles on farms in Vietnam – including two that have supplied skins to a tannery owned by Louis Vuitton's parent company, LVMH – are confined to tiny pits and sometimes hacked apart while they're still alive and thrashing, PETA US has become a shareholder of LVMH on the Euronext Paris in order to put pressure on the company to stop selling exotic-skins merchandise.

"Every PETA exposé of the exotic-skins industry has found that sensitive living beings are crammed into filthy pits, hacked apart, and left to die", says PETA Director Elisa Allen. "From demonstrating on the street or speaking up in the boardroom, PETA and our international affiliates will push LVMH to stop selling any bag, watch strap, or shoe made from a reptile's skin."

PETA's exposé reveals that on the two farms which have supplied LVMH, thousands of reptiles lay motionless in tiny concrete cells, some shorter than their own bodies, for 15 months before finally being slaughtered. Others were jam-packed by the dozens into barren concrete pits. At another farm, workers hacked into thrashing crocodiles' necks and rammed metal rods down their spines as blood poured from the wounds, and one crocodile is shown still moving after being skinned. This killing method has long been shown to be inhumane, and experts have found that crocodilians remain conscious for over an hour after their spinal cord has been severed and their blood vessels cut.

PETA and its international affiliates – whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to wear" – have exposed cruelty on reptile farms on three continents (Africa, Asia, and North America) and each time have shown that these intelligent, sensitive animals endure squalid imprisonment and a violent death.

For more information about the exotic skins industry, please visit PETA.org.uk.