In never-before-seen footage, a PETA Asia investigation into an Indonesian abattoir that supplies Gucci with lizard skins reveals how Gucci wallets, belts, and purses are made. The lizards’ legs are tied, then they’re callously thrown around and beheaded without stunning – causing them a prolonged, agonising death. This kind of cruelty goes into every one of Gucci’s lizard leather purses, belts, wallets, and other fashion accessories.
Live Lizards Tossed Around and Hit With Machetes
The footage shows workers yanking lizards out of sacks and small cages. Their legs have been tied together, which likely causes pain and tissue damage. Workers toss the lizards around and submerge them in tubs of water. At least two lizards were violently struck on the head with the side of a machete – for no apparent reason other than to cause them more pain and stress.
Conscious Lizards Are Beheaded for Gucci Accessories
Workers put the lizards on a wooden block one by one and chopped off their heads. PETA Asia’s investigators documented workers striking lizards up to 14 times with a machete until the decapitation was complete. Lizards struggled and thrashed throughout the process.
According to Dr Clifford Warwick, a reptile expert who reviewed PETA Asia’s footage, decapitating live, conscious reptiles has been recognized as extremely inhumane by major scientific bodies for approximately four decades and is illegal in some parts of the world.
Decapitation does not cause an instantaneous death in lizards. According to Dr Warwick, the lizards’ brains were probably conscious – fully aware and feeling intense physical pain and psychological stress – for over 30 minutes after they had been beheaded. PETA Asia’s footage shows lizards’ heads moving after being severed.
Workers then inflated the lizards’ headless bodies with an air compressor to make their skin easier to remove.
“The film depicts the brutal treatment and killing of lizards using methods that are strongly inconsistent with scientific evidence-based protocols, are contraindicated, are abusive, and are inhumane.”
– Dr Clifford Warwick, PGDip (MedSci), PhD, CBiol, CSci, EurProBiol, FRSB
Despite hearing from PETA, Gucci continues to profit from this kind of cruelty.
Lizards have individual personalities, just like cats and dogs. Research has shown that some species of lizards are devoted parents and mates, and three generations of lizards may live together in family groups. Rather than exploring lush rainforests, the lizards used by Gucci are taken out of their natural habitat, abused, and violently killed for cold-blooded vanity.
Animals Are Being Violently Killed for Brands Like Gucci
No matter what standards companies tout, PETA entities have repeatedly exposed the horrendous ways in which animals are abused by the exotic skins trade. A previous PETA Asia investigation documented that snakes in Vietnam are killed by being inflated with compressed air and that crocodiles are electroshocked, stabbed, inflated, and then likely skinned alive. In South Africa, PETA US investigators caught workers on camera striking ostriches in the face during transport, and at the abattoir, they were stunned and flipped upside down, and then their throats were slit in full view of the other terrified birds – all for the bumpy-textured ostrich-skin purses sold by Gucci.
No bag, belt, or wallet is worth so much pain and suffering. Please don’t buy accessories made out of wildlife skins: Choose humane, eco-friendly, vegan options instead.