After while, crocodile

Red crocodile Hermes HOC bag

In today’s “stories that sound like setups for first-person shooter video games” news, there’s been a few interesting stories after Hermes recently announced that it is starting its own crocodile farms to keep up with demand for its bags. It used to buy from Australian farms, like this one mentioned in a Times Online story:

“We sell all of our skins to European fashion houses,” Mr Burns (owner of Darwin Crocodile Farm, which currently houses 60,000 crocodiles) told The Times. “Australian crocodiles are recognised as the best in the world … but they are the most aggressive, so they are also the hardest to farm.”

Young saltwater crocodiles at Darwin

60,000 crocodiles and they can’t keep up? Well, there’s mitigating factors, as in it takes three or four 4-year-old, 6-foot-long crocodiles to make one Hermes bag, because they only use parts of the belly skin (the regular skin has little bits of armor-type bone that screw up the texture).

Also, because saltwater crocodiles are a fairly aggressive and territorial bunch living in an artificially small environment, they often scar or kill each other in fights. About a third of the skins are deemed unworthy for Hermes bags, which are currently going for up to $60,000.

PETA, of course, is not down with crocodile farms.

“The thought of purposely breeding and killing crocodiles for an outdated, overpriced handbag should make fashionista’s skin crawl,” Peta vice president Dan Mathews said. “If Hermes really wants to be a leader in the fashion industry, it should stop killing animals for cold-blooded vanity and use cruelty-free mock crock and fake snake instead.”

Which… is true. We feel like when it comes to fur and snakeskin and other materials in which the death of the animal serves no purpose other than “PRETTY!” the eventual wearer should have to watch the full process of making their coat or shoe or whatnot, gore and all. Then again, it’s not like I don’t eat the occasional burger or wear leather, and as I’ve got the typical American blindness as to where my food/shoes come from, I manage to do it without throwing up.

Somehow, it feels less hypocritcal if the cowhides usually come from animals that were butchered for meat anyway, whereas there’s not a ton of people out there eating mink or crocodile. What do you think?