PETA wants the "skinning" to STOP fighting back with snakes on a train.

While reading the Boston Herald online I came across an interesting piece about one of PETA's latest attempts to protect animals throughout the world. Often times this organization acts as a major pathway to the protection of cute and cuddly animals like dogs, cats, and birds. At times their movements can be radical but hey they're trying to save lives so maybe radical is justified. This article brought to light a new PETA campaign that focuses on none other than herps. The campaign is specifically aimed at protecting snakes, alligators, crocodiles, and lizards by providing people with information about the horrors of using their skin to make fashion accessories. The campaign will consist of rubber snakes being hung from the ceiling in subway cars as well as billboard ads encouraging people to forsake the use of fashion accessories that use materials derived from these animals.

After reading the article I thought it would be useful to do a little bit of outside research just to get an idea of how the production of the accessories made from this skin works. The article suggests that the animals are alive and can in fact feel the pain of having their skin removed (yikes!). I have to say that when I began my search Google immediately pulled up a bunch of shoe and purse websites. Obviously this was not what I was looking to find at all. I guess this just shows how popular snake, crocodile, alligator, and lizard skin is in the consumer market.  

When I finally did find some useful material the process in all seemed pretty barbaric and wasteful. Many of the illustrated processes showed the animal as immobile and I assume dead but I doubt we can be sure of that. I've included a link to an illustrated process and if you're a herp lover I probably wouldn't even look at it. Overall I agree with PETA's movement to make people aware of the damage their mundane fashion accessories may be doing.  

http://ezinearticles.com/?Intricate-Tanning-Process-of-Alligator,-Crocodile,-and-Ostrich-Skin&id=3040283

The link above describes the method of preparing crocodile skin but there aren't any graphic pictures included.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1061121310

The orginal article

http://www.hidetanning.net/SnakeSkinningIllustrated.html

Illustrated Article of the skinning process