'Bleeding' Kirsty Henderson in protest against cruelty to reptiles for Hermès bags

Kirsty Henderson

Kirsty Henderson, a 27-year-old campaigner from Rochdale, lay wearing only crocodile-print leggings in a pool of "blood" outside of the Hermès shop in Luxembourg on Monday (14 September).

The action came in the wake of PETA's exposé of farms that supply crocodile and alligator skins to Hermès-owned tanneries, which revealed that reptiles were trapped in barren and severely crowded pits. One farm manager sawed open alligators' necks, and some of the animals were still moving minutes after the crude attempt to slaughter them.

Speaking to Rochdale Online, Kirsty said: “My action came as a result of an investigation by PETA US in which it was found that there were crocodile farms in Zimbabwe and Texas that supply to Hermès. It was found that the animals were kept in dark, dingy tanks, often for long lengths of time before being killed.

"I was shocked by PETA's exposé, which reveals that Hermès' 'luxury' accessories are sourced from these living, feeling animals who were mutilated and left to die slowly and in pain on squalid farms."

Kirsty decided to protest outside of the store to bring people’s attention to the issues.

She said: "I travelled to Luxembourg to join PETA in calling on Hermès to stop profiting from these animals' miserable lives and deaths by taking exotic skins off the shelves for good. I wanted to do a protest that was ‘out there’ to grab people’s attention and to get people talking. People were looking as they walked by and people from the shops were coming out to see what was going on.”

The peaceful protest lasted around hour.

“The police did turn up,” added Kirsty. “We did get permission to do the demonstration but I think there was a problem with the nudity because that is illegal. In the end I think there were six officers and I had to leave with them.”

As documented in the investigation by PETA US – whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to wear" – workers shot alligators in the head, some multiple times, with a captive-bolt gun and sawed into the back of their necks with a box cutter to sever their blood vessels. Some animals survived and were seen moving in ice-water bins minutes afterwards. When the captive-bolt gun was believed to be malfunctioning, a facility manager told a worker to cut into hundreds of conscious alligators and try to dislocate their vertebrae and then shove a metal rod up their spinal columns in an attempt to scramble their brains.

Kirsty has been involved with PETA for over two years and previously worked for the Vegetarian Society in Manchester.

Kirsty added: “I am very pleased with how the protest went. It was a peaceful protest by one person and I think it certainly got the attention I was hoping for. It was talked about across Luxembourg in all of their news outlets.”