Banned! Arnotts and Brown Thomas Are Going Exotic Skins–Free
Banned! Arnotts and Brown Thomas Are Going Exotic Skins–Free
Dublin – After years of pressure from PETA and local activists – including eye-catching protests – Selfridges Group has confirmed that its Irish department stores, Arnotts and Brown Thomas, have banned exotic skins and will be rid of all items using them by the end of this year.
The news follows a ban by Selfridges’ Canadian department stores, Holt Renfrew, on the sale of fur and exotic skins, meaning the entire company – which includes De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands – will be fur and exotic skins–free by 2022.
“No kind shopper today would dream of wearing a snake’s skin or a fox’s fur,” says PETA Director of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor. “Selfridges Group’s decision is right on trend – and it’s helping PETA push the fashion world towards a day when no animal is caged or killed for a clutch or a coat.”
PETA has released several exposés of the exotic-skins industry revealing rampant cruelty. Alligators are kept in fetid water inside dank, dark sheds until slaughter, when their necks are hacked open and a metal rod is shoved up into their brains, often while they’re fully conscious. Snakes are commonly nailed to a tree before being slit open from one end to the other and then skinned alive. And year-old ostriches are transported by lorry to abattoirs, where workers flip them upside down, stun them, and slit their throats.
Most animals used for fur spend their entire lives inside cramped cages, where they frantically pace back and forth, gnaw on the cage bars, and mutilate themselves before they’re electrocuted, gassed, or poisoned. Those who are trapped in nature may suffer for days before trappers arrive to shoot, strangle, or stamp them to death. Additionally, COVID-19 has been found on fur farms in more than 10 countries, including Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, prompting the latter to bring forward its planned fur ban.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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