EXOTIC

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) attempts to regulate the trade of over 35,000 endangered species. In a 2014 article for Women’s Wear Daily, the secretary general of CITES stated that “legal trade in python skin is valued at $1 billion a year, with estimates suggesting black market trade ‘of the same order’.”2 While the reticulated and Burmese python species are not currently listed as endangered, concerns over the likelihood of their extinction due to increasing, unregulated capturing and killing of the snakes has led to the introduction of ‘solutions’ like captive breeding and farming of these snakes. The demands placed by CITES of snakeskins having been farmed has led to a widespread problem of suppliers simply lying on documents that snakes being wild-caught are actually farmed.

One suggested scenario is that Reticulated Pythons are being illegally caught in Indonesia and Malaysia and smuggled into Singapore. From there, traders could mix the skins with existing stockpiles and using false declaration of source on CITES permits (i.e. recorded as “captive-bred” in Viet Nam), they are re-exported abroad, mainly to Europe. In this way, enforcement authorities and importers are “re-exported abroad, mainly to Europe. In this way, enforcement authorities and importers are misled as to the true origin and source of the shipments while the skins, and the snakes, never touch Vietnamese soil.3

According to a comprehensive 2012 International Trade Center report,4 more than 500,000 python skins are exported annually from Southeast Asia, with the European leather and fashion industry being the largest importer, constituting 96% of the trade. The report also revealed that the trade in snake skins, which is valued at $1 billion annually, raises serious concerns over illegal activities like smuggling snakes and forging permits, cruelty to snakes like the common practice of sealing snakes’ mouths and anuses with rubber bands and inflating them using an air compressor to stretch them for skinning until they suffocate to death after prolonged periods, the risking of endangered and threatened species, and a lack of transparency, oversight and monitoring in general.

But are farms the solution to overhunting? Only from a strictly population-numbers standpoint (if, in fact, the farming isn’t simply a guise for laundering wild snakes), but certainly not from the perspective of animal cruelty. Farmed snakes are not only subject to the same killing methods as wild-caught snakes— methods that prioritize the cheapest way possible to kill them without damaging the skin, but they must also endure lifelong confinement, transportation, and premature death. The captive snakes are also reliant upon farmed animal meat for sustenance, like piglets and chicken heads and necks,5 which adds yet another scheme of animal captivity and slaughter connected to snake farming.

The language in the ITC report concerning animal cruelty is conservative, at best. It showcases the complete removal of individuality, often referring to snakes as stock6 or specimens7 and qualifying cruelty as perceived cruelty8—as if the cruelty is only a matter for animal welfare non-governmental organizations, and not the snakes themselves.

When it comes to the methods of killing the snakes, there are three main practices identified depending upon region.

In Indonesia, pythons are killed by a blow to the head using a hammer or mallet. Some slaughterhouses also decapitate the animal after the blow to the head. The animals are then hung or nailed to rafters by the head and filled with water using a hosepipe inserted into the mouth. This swells the body facilitating the skinning process. Similar practices have been observed in Malaysia.9

In Malaysia, in one slaughterhouse which was visited, pythons were decapitated and hung by the tail to a rafter. They are then filled with water, using a hose inserted into the oesophagus of the snake. It was unknown if the snakes were stunned before decapitation.10

In Viet Nam, the research team observed at one slaughterhouse that the live snakes (P. bivittatus) have their mouths and anus sealed using rubber bands. An air compressor is then used to fill the animal’s alimentary canal with air which has the same effect as filling the animal with water (i.e. to facilitate skinning), only the animal is still alive, not having had its head cut off or its brain crushed first. Post-inflation, a rubber band was also tied around the heart to cause cardiac arrest. According to the CITES MA and those farmers and traders interviewed, this is the most commonly employed slaughter method in Viet Nam’s snake industry. The team observed that the animal continued to move for around 15-30 minutes after inflation.11

And it isn’t just snakes. In 2015 and 2016, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) conducted several undercover investigations at alligator and crocodile farms in the United States, Zimbabwe, and Viet Nam. What investigators documented is consistent across farms in all three countries. The reptiles are kept in factory farm conditions—intensive confinement in massive concrete grids where thousands are either isolated to individual enclosures sometimes smaller than their own bodies, or crammed together by the hundreds into small, filthy pools. In Viet Nam, which exports approximately 30,000 crocodile skins per year, the crocodiles are killed at approximately 15 months, and the killing method involves cutting open the top of the neck at the base of the head, exposing the spinal column, and jamming a long, metal rod down the inside of the spine to destroy the nerves. The reason given for this process is to paralyze the crocodilians, so they do not struggle while being skinned. The narrator in the Vietnamese investigation video explains “because crocodiles can live for periods with very little oxygen, they can survive for hours after this procedure. “Meaning many of the millions of crocodiles killed each year for their skins may experience a prolonged, painful death.”12 At Padenga, which claims to process 43,000 skins per year alone, the director of “operations describes the slaughter process for crocodiles who have reached 36 months of age.

So you put him on a table, and then you bend his nose down and his spine comes close like that, and you plunge a scalpel into the spine, then spinal shock. Then you take a, you know, like a whippy aerial on your car, and you plunge it down his spine. It takes the spine out completely right to the base of the tail. Then you take a rod with a pointed end and you pith the brain. Then you can work with him—you know, you can skin him and process him, because otherwise the nerves and everything are—you know, they’re always twitching on the table.13

At Lone Star Alligator Farm in Texas, USA, the young alligators are referred to as “watchbands,” and they were documented living in conditions that led to raw, damaged skin around their jaws. They are killed with a shot to the head by a captive bolt gun, before having the back of their necks cut open with a box-cutter. The investigator also documented workers stabbing conscious alligators with a knife in the cervical spine and brain when the captive bolt gun was not working, and admitting “reptiles will continue to live.”14

The videos from all of the investigations document the animals still moving while their spines are being destroyed, and even after being skinned. In other words, many are skinned while still conscious. In Viet Nam, the farm owner claimed they supply skins to Louis Vuitton and other LVMH brands, while the Lone Star Alligator Farm in Texas and Padenga in Zimbabwe claimed to supply an Hermès-owned tannery. After seeing one of the investigations, actress and singer Jane Birkin asked Hermes to remove her namesake from the Birkin Bag, which can fetch up to $300,000 when made in crocodile skin.15 Birkin stated

Having been alerted to the cruel practices reserved for crocodiles during their slaughter to make Hermès handbags carrying my name ... I have asked Hermès to debaptise the Birkin Croco until better practices in line with international norms can be put in place.

She later recanted her request after Hermès claimed to have identified an "isolated irregularity”16 and would be “requiring suppliers to sign an agreement to uphold the highest standards in crocodile treatment.”17 The agreement would be voluntary and self-enforced, calling into question its effectiveness in more than publicity. It would seem that it is not enough for fashion brands to simply be inspired to stitch, print, and form in honor of reptiles’ textures, colors, patterns, and shapes. In 2017, Kering started their own python farm in Thailand, and London’s Financial Times asked, “Do people with £2,000 to spend on a Gucci python-skin handbag really care how the snake in question lived?”18 The concept that there is an ethical way to breed, confine and slaughter is troubling in that it demands we examine how we are defining “ethical” in the first place. Must we actually tear skins from animals’ bodies and call it our property? It is an obvious dichotomy that designers and customers are inspired by these animals so passionately that they fatally betray them.