UPDATE: On July 24th, one month after PETA released video showing crocodiles and alligators used to make Birkin bags being tortured, British singer Jane Birkin has asked Hermès to remove her name from the line of handbags: “Having been alerted to the cruel practices reserved for crocodiles during their slaughter to make Hermes 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.”

In 2001, a NY Times fashion writer reported that Jessica Seinfeld, the wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, attempted to use her famous last name at an Hermès store to jump to the front of a waiting list for a Birkin Bag, a purse regarded by many as the ultimate status symbol. Ms. Seinfeld, exasperated by negative stories written about her in gossip columns, denied the allegations in subsequent media coverage. Lost in the celebrity scandal were the real victims: the alligators and crocodiles who are raised and slaughtered in concrete factories to make the purses.

Reality star Kris Jenner wears Hermes purse made from alligator skin (photo: purseblog.com)

In 2014, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sent undercover investigators into factories in Zimbabwe and Texas that supply Hermes with their crocodiles and alligators. Video footage shows employees cutting into their bodies while they are fully conscious, sawing into the back of their necks with a box cutter to sever their blood vessels and stabbing them in an attempt to dislocate their vertebrae during the drawn-out slaughter process. Investigators documented crocodiles bleeding out and writhing in agony for several minutes.

The undercover investigation also revealed the conditions in which the alligators and crocodiles are housed. In the wild, these intelligent animals raise their young, use tools to capture their prey and live for decades, often longer than humans. On factory farms, the crocodiles are intensively confined in concrete pits, forced to live in pools of their own excrement and denied the chance to do anything that comes naturally to them. They are slaughtered after just one year.

Crocodiles at Hermes crocodile skin supplier live in excrement-filled concrete pits

Hermes’ crocodile factory farm in Zimbabwe

Hermès suppliers slaughter up to four alligators to make just one Birkin bag. The skins are also used to make watchbands, belts, shoes and other accessories.

Alligator: before & after

In a statement included in the NY Times story about the PETA investigation, Hermès defends its products and expresses no remorse about the brutality exposed in the video.

In Texas, the Chambers County District Attorney is conducting an investigation at Lone Star Alligator Farms.

Crocodiles intensively confined at Hermès supplier in Zimbabwe

The alligators sold by Hermès are subjected to unspeakable atrocities on their journey to becoming a purse. Please sign letter asking Hermes to stop selling items made from crocodile and alligator skins.

Up to 4 alligators must be slaughtered to make one Hermès Birkin Bag

On a trip to Spain in 2010, Aylam Orian, an actor and filmmaker from Los Angeles, stumbled upon a public spectacle that would change his life forever — a ceremony in which dozens of animal rights activists displayed the bodies of dead animals to help observers make the connection between the animals they were seeing and the food on their plates. It was an event so provocative and impactful that it inspired Mr. Orian to replicate it in the United States.

Igualdad Animal (Animal Equality) stages animal rights rally in Spain

Animal rights rally in Spain

Five years later, Mr. Orian is, with the help of dozens of volunteers, producing the fifth National Animal Rights Day (NARD), with rallies in eight cities in the U.S. and Canada that are expected to attract over 1,000 participants.

2014 National Animal Rights Day in Los Angeles

The use of animals’ bodies has its critics, but Mr. Orian asserts that the tactic helps observers connect the dots: “Most people never see farm animals in their lives; they only see their body parts on their plates. When we show them what these animals look like in the flesh, cradled in our arms like you would cradle a baby or a beloved pet, they feel something. Many stop to ask questions, and that gives us a chance to inspire them to change their lifestyle.”

National Animal Rights Day ceremony observers (photo: John Hays)

National Animal Rights Day Founder Aylam Orian in 2013 (photo: Sarah Jane Hardt]

2015 National Animal Rights Day in Toronto, Canada (photo: Joanne McArthur)

When people criticize the ceremony, Mr. Orian explains that the deceased animals, all of whom were donated, are treated with exceptional respect: “Instead of being ground up in a rendering plant or thrown into the garbage, we clean them, treat them with dignity and, after the ceremony, cremate them and spread their ashes. It’s the only tenderness most of these animals will ever receive.”

Animal rights activists pay their respects at a National Animal Rights Day ceremony

2015 National Animal Rights Day in Los Angeles (photo: Cameron Wapner)

Jane Velez-Mitchell of Jane UnChained spoke to Mr. Orian to talk about National Animal Rights Day, the controversial use of deceased animals and the impact of the rallies on the public.

The National Animal Rights Day ceremonies are produced by Mr. Orian’s newly-incorporated charity, Our Planet, Theirs Too, and are taking place on May 30th in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Colorado Springs, Seattle, Toronto and Ottowa and on June 7th in New York and Northampton (MA).

2015 National Animal Rights Day Toronto, Canada (photo: Joanne McArthur)

National Animal Rights Day 2015 (photo: John Hays)

At a Barnes & Noble bookstore in New York City on Tuesday, animal rights activists confronted Kim Kardashian face-to-face to disrupt her book signing and protest her consumption of fur.

Kim Kardashian has been photographed in dozens of fur garments.

After a six hour wait in line, activist Crank Dennehy got straight to the point: “Can you make [the autograph] out to all of the animals that have been tortured and killed for you to wear a fur coat?”

In a news brief about the Kim Kardashian disruption, celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton wrote, “While we agree that wearing fur isn’t the most considerate act, it must suck to have so many people screaming in your face at once.”  In response, one reader explained why this approach is effective: “By creating a scene with someone who has millions of followers, they gain [create] further awareness about how bad the situation really is. Most of the animals are either electrocuted or skinned alive.”

Animals raised for fur go insane in their cages before being anally electrocuted or skinned alive

Kardashian smiles at Rob Banks, an anti-fur activist on the verge of disrupting her book signing

The disruption took place just one day after another fur-promoting celebrity, Rihanna, attended the annual costume gala at NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art wearing a fur-trim dress the size of small swimming pool.

Rihanna in fur

The gala, which benefits the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, is organized by yet another fur promoter, Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Because of her consistent promotion of fur in the media and on the pages of Vogue, Wintour has been the target of animal rights activists for decades.

Vogue editor Anna Wintour is the fur industry’s most important ally and spokesperson.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day (4/16), victims of the animal holocaust will be remembered during a funeral procession in New York City. Among the participants will be a survivor from Hungary who lost her sister and father in Nazi concentration camps and has dedicated her life to fighting atrocities committed against animals.

Funeral for victims of animal holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day

The animal holocaust

“The longest running holocaust in history is taking place right under our noses, but it is being ignored.” said organizer Shimon Shuchat, who comes from a Hasidic Jewish family in Brooklyn. “Right now, mother cows are crying out for their kidnapped babies; piglets are being castrated with no painkillers; male chicks are being dropped into shredding machines; monkeys are being tortured laboratories; and millions of farm animals are making the long, terrifying journey to a slaughterhouse. For what?”

Slaughterhouse

Every year in the United States, roughly 10 billion land animals and 50 billion sea animals are killed for food.

Painting by Jo Frederiks

One of the founders of the modern day animal rights movement, Alex Hershaft, is a Holocaust survivor, and, like Mr. Shuchat, he’s not shy about invoking the genocide when speaking about animal factory farms and slaughterhouses.

Before being smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, five year old Hershaft saw Jews being beaten by Nazis in the streets. He lost most of his family during the war, but he gained empathy that helped him connect dots between crimes against humans and crimes against animals. In 1976, Dr. Hershaft founded the organization that would eventually become the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM).

Over the years, the animal rights group PETA has come under fire for using Holocaust imagery – juxtaposing images of  concentration camps with factory farms. Some activists believe that the comparison gives the target audience license to dismiss the message, which defeats the purpose of the campaign. Others support the analogy. In fact, author Isaac Besheva Singer said, “In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. For the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka. Human beings see oppression vividly when they’re the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.”

The animal holocaust

PETA’s animal holocaust Campaign

It is the “cries of the silent victims of modern day concentration camps” that Mr. Shuchat intends to amplify on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Shuchat also hopes to change behavior: “When footage of factory farms farms is played side by side with footage of the Holocaust, people can see that there’s not much of a difference. If only a few of those people stop eating animals, then we know we will have made a difference.”

Funeral procession participants will gather in midtown at 7:00 p.m. and, carrying posters and banners, will travel to Times Square for a candlelight vigil.

Coby’s family hid Jews in Amsterdam during WWII (photo: Kyle Justin DiFulvio)

Two weeks prior to Holocaust Remembrance Day, Germany announced that it will be the first country in the world to ban live chicken shredding. Fifty percent of chickens born into the egg industry – the males – are either dropped alive into a shredding machine or are suffocated to death because they cannot lay eggs. In Germany alone, an estimate 45 million baby male chicks are killed each year.

It’s Fashion Week in a frigid NYC, and the streets are covered in blood. And, while nothing short of an army of full time activists could stem the flow, the community is fighting back.

Earlier this week, TheirTurn reported on fur shaming as a tactic to stop people from wearing fur garments. Today, we look at other approaches to transform the Big Apple from red to green.

BILLBOARDS: PETA has erected a 90′ billboard in Times Square on which the musician Pink poses naked and says, “Be comfortable in your own skin, and let others keep theirs.”  Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will see – and perhaps think about and discuss – this provocative billboard.

PETA’s Anti-fur billboard in Times Square (photo: Slobadan Randjelovic)

In December, Friends of Animals erected a “Flip Off” Fur billboard in Times Square and risked arrest with a bold protest inside of the Macy’s “Fur Vault.”

Friends of Animals (FOA) anti-fur billboard in Times Square

PROTESTS: Jane Velez-Mitchell of JaneUnchained has reported on several recent fur protests in New York. In this story, Jane covers a Caring Activists Against Fur (CAAF) protest at the Fur Source, a store on which the activist community has declared war.

During fashion week, Viktor Luna, a designer who uses fur, staged a runway show on the backs of NYC’s beleaguered carriage horses. NYCLASS, an activist group working to ban horse-drawn carriages, held a protest in an attempt to disrupt the designer’s show and generate attention for the plight of the carriage horses.

Designer Viktor Luna staged a fashion show on the backs of carriage horses. (photo: Daily News)

Caring Activists Against Fur Valentine’s Day Protest (photos: Roberto Bonelli)

ONE-ON-ONE ENGAGEMENT: Some activists shame people wearing fur; some wear anti-fur buttons; and some attempt to start a conversation with people wearing fur.

A TheirTurn reader (left) submitted this photo of herself with a fur wearer who was willing to not only listen but also pose for a post-discussion photo.

The winter of 2015 has brought out so much fur that activists are tearing out our own hair in frustration, but we can’t let that stop us. We must create an environment where people no longer feel comfortable wearing fur because they are either educated about the issue or afraid of the consequences. If you live someplace where people wear fur, please use whatever approach works best for you to be a voice for the animals who have every right to keep their skin.