Video: PETA Supporters Detained After Disrupting Kering AGM Over Bogus Promises on Wild-Animal Skins

24.04.2025

Paris — During Kering’s annual meeting today, shareholders were greeted by a group of PETA supporters bearing signs depicting CEO François-Henri Pinault as Pinocchio, calling out his unkept promise to “collaborate” with PETA to end the extreme cruelty to animals in the company’s supply chain. The activists were later detained by police. Inside, a representative of PETA US – which owns stock in the company – pressed Pinault to commit to seeing firsthand the appalling conditions in which wild animals are confined and killed for Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta accessories.

The meeting was then brought to a screeching halt when two animal allies in attendance holding signs reading “Kering: Ban Wild-Animal Skins” pleaded with Pinault to ban the skins of tormented wildlife from Kering’s collections.

Photos of the action are available here. Credit: Joana Durbaku

Video is available here.

“Reptile-skin accessories represent the suffering of animals who endured a lifetime of misery before they were bludgeoned, sliced open, or even skinned alive,” says PETA Vice President of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor. “PETA is calling on Kering to get out of the vile wild-animal skins trade and switch to the luxurious vegan materials that today’s compassionate consumers demand.”

Snake mothers are fiercely protective of their eggs, and some species care for their babies for weeks after they hatch and even “babysit” other mothers’ hatchlings. A PETA Asia investigation revealed that workers at two python farms that supply skins to a tannery owned by Kering pinned struggling pythons down by the neck before bashing them over the head with a hammer and impaling them on hooks while they were still moving.

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

PETA US’ shareholder question follows.

My name is James Fraser, and I have a question for Monsieur Pinault on behalf of shareholder People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

At last year’s meeting, I showed footage of the horrendous abuse of pythons that PETA Asia documented on farms supplying the Kering-owned tannery Caravel. Snakes were bashed on the head with hammers, impaled on hooks and pumped full of water as they continued to move, and then skinned. PETA Asia previously documented that wild animals are decapitated and dismembered in Kering’s supply chain.

You responded: “Rest assured that we are ready to collaborate with you to end this type of practice.” Regrettably, that hasn’t proved to be true. PETA’s publicly expressed desire to take you up on this offer to work together has been met with silence.

In front of shareholders, you act as if you have nothing to hide. We and other shareholders are entitled to honesty. Will you reaffirm this commitment and assign someone to set a date when PETA can accompany your team on a trip to examine at first hand the grim conditions in which wild animals are reared and killed for Gucci and Saint Laurent accessories, or will you affirm that you are not actually interested in seeing these conditions for yourself?

#