This article might look like something jumbled up in haste but with a mind that just processed how a very much alive crocodile was skinned alive, words do tend to lose their order. The video where I saw this was uploaded by PETA on their official website. It is from a crocodile farm in Vietnam which provides the crocodile skin for the prized Crocodile skin bags from Louis Vuitton.
Now, we understand that crocodile skin bags from LV are exotic and a prized possession but imagine if it was made out of your own skin, with you being skinned alive and left to suffer till you finally lost your consciousness and died!Would you be able to purchase such a bag? No right?
Then why are animals any different? They have lives too! They have families too! They feel things, they feel pain and they fear death maybe more than we do!
Then why do they have to suffer for our fun?
Imagine how the poor crocs must have felt when an incision was made on their neck in order to drain the blood. A reptile expert stated that this method doesn’t result in instant death. Rather it takes about an hour of excruciating pain before the crocodiles lose their conscious. Even after the spinal cord has been removed, the conscious remains for over an hour. Once that is done, the crocodiles are shifted to another room where they are skinned while they are very much alive. The video released by PETA even shows how one crocodile continued to move even after its skin was peeled- maybe the poor guy thought that he still had a shot at life! What could he have known of the dark abyss of human apathy and cruelty after all!
The crocodiles that need to be skinned are kept in small concrete enclosures at least a month or so prior to the final day of skinning. This itself is pretty inhuman considering the enclosure is very small and the aggression and violence to sustain that results in such enclosures result in loss of parts and in some cases even life of the crocodiles.
It is really hard to understand how we writhe with pain when we think of fellow human getting a severe wound from a wound from an accident and yet the “other” lives matter so less to us. And what all for? Just Fashion!! Just so that one could take a prized bag out and flaunt it, we make peace with a living-being being murdered in such inhuman ways!
And, it isn’t just LVMH. Louis Vuitton was specifically caught because PETA is on its board.
The Vietnam based crocodile farm owners had stated that the said crocodiles were being skinned for multiple other big brands too!
While we are sharing the video originally updated by PETA on their website, we would suggest that not everyone should watch it, especially not the faint-hearted because such cruelty is too hard to absorb. The video can be accessed here.
All said and done, whether you just read the article or maybe watched the video too- do you really think that animal cruelty is worth it? A recent series on Netflix called “Zoo” talks about a world where animals have realised that they are powerful enough and hence need not be oppressed- so, they fight back! Are we looking at such things happening in reality too?
And if this happens, do you really think that expensive bag would still be worth it?
(The article was first published by PETA on its website under the Investigation section. It can be accessed on https://investigations.peta.org/vietnam-crocodile-skin-farm/)