# Awful!!! Snakes being skinned alive! - Please sign petition



## Gecko :) (Aug 18, 2012)

This is absolutely disgraceful & completely unnecessary & needs to be stopped!
Some humans are bloody disgusting!
Please sign the petition to help put a stop to this ****!

Every year millions of snakes, lizards, crocodiles and alligators are farmed or hunted and killed for their skins - to be used for footware, clothing, belts and countless other fashion accessories.
Python shoes, boots, belts, jackets and skirts are being fashioned from snakes’ skin and items made from exotic skins come with a high price – and that it's paid by the animals who are torn away from their jungle homes and cruelly killed; this illicit trade can even have terrible consequences for fragile eco-systems around the world.
Snakes killed for their skin are often nailed to trees and skinned alive before being tossed into a pile to die. They can suffer for days before succumbing to shock or dehydration. Pythons often have a hose inserted into their mouth and are pumped full of water to make them easier to skin. Alligators on farms are often beaten with hammers and sometimes take up to two hours to die.
If you need more proof that reptiles suffer when they are exploited for fashion, see the pictures and watch the videos on our website:
leather ~ Pythons are the latest victims of fashion's new obsession - ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??Occupy for Animals!
With tons of fashionable and cruelty-free alternatives such as fake snake and mock croc available, there is no reason for ANY animal to suffer to become a fashion accessory for humans. 
We think that this industry is disgustingly cruel and that this trade must be stopped and we kindly request that the European Union bans the sale of any and all products made from reptile skins in the European Union.

Petition | Ban all snake and reptile skin products in the EU! | Change.org


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## Beautyreptiles (Aug 18, 2012)

Signed it already, post in as many places as you can to get the word around


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## silent36 (Aug 18, 2012)

thats really sad


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## Robynne (Aug 18, 2012)

iVE SIGNED IT. ITS REALLY SAD, AND DISGUSTING. I WILL GET EVERYONE I KNOW TO SIGN IT TOO !


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## Grogshla (Aug 18, 2012)

signed


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## Snapped (Aug 18, 2012)

Whilst being disgusting, the info is from and old article written in 2007, so not sure if this practice still happens, but god I hope not. 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...cking-reality-fashions-new-obsession.htmlPeta 
Peta are a strange radical group who dont hold a lot of credibility with me personally.

Loads of animals are treated disgustingly for our benefit.....from caged hens, to pigs kept in a tiny concrete pen their whole lives so we can eat pork/bacon, to turkeys are force fed, lambs and calves slaughtered so we can eat lamb & veal....and in Asia their treatment of bears is beyond cruel, all so they can extract bile, have you seen the trade of wild animal organs to make so called "health" products?It makes me sick.
Dont get me started on Africa, elephants massacred for their tusks, baby monkeys torn from their mothers (who are usually shot or beheaded) to be sold on the black market....and on and on and on.
Man truly is the most dangerous animal on the planet
.And I truly hope this disgusting python skin trade isn't still happening.
Hopefully people can boycott the items, like they did with the fur trade.


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## longqi (Aug 18, 2012)

The python skin trade is still happening 
The pythons are still killed using water and skinned alive 
The method is slightly different to how it is described here
Farmed Pythons are pinned up and filled with water for up to 2 days
This makes skinning easier and gives a better product
The rest of the python is then used for meat etc so its not left to die slowly
Wild caught pythons are usually killed quickly and skinned immediately

120,000 python skins exported from Indonesia last year which is total ecological vandalism
This does not include the skins turned into bags and belts etc prior to export
Also does not include the finished products sold in Indonesia to western customers

One important thing is the buyers
Asians very rarely wear snake skin products
Westerners like us are the ones who created the demand
Only westerners can stop it


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## sanna (Aug 18, 2012)

I don't understand how somebody could do something so cruel . It really is horrible what they do to these animals, all for the sake of making clothes, shoes and handbags. How the people that wear these products live with themselves knowing this, I have no idea. I have lost respect for so many different designers as soon as I have found out that they have started to use animal products in their products...disgusting!!


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## ddammitt (Aug 18, 2012)

signed


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## Sezzzzzzzzz (Aug 18, 2012)

done!!!!


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## someday (Aug 18, 2012)

sad  
signed


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## DanN (Aug 18, 2012)

What a complete load of crap! 

The website posted has little basis in fact or reality. Yes, pythons are captured in the wild in places like Indonesia and skinned (not alive though!) for the fashion. Everybody is entitled to their opinion of this, however, this trade is one of the largest industries for Indonesia and is of significant benefit to local people. Moreover, this trade has been ongoing for 6 decades, yet there is no evidence that it is unsustainable.

There are many farms that breed snakes for their skins. The ruse that Viet Nam illegally launder wild snakes through farms and export them as captive-bred is just a flat-out lie - or an opinion made based on inadequate information. By all means express your views on the treatment of animals, but please don't get sucked in by the pathetic propaganda machine that is PETA.

As someone who does know about this trade I certainly won't be signing anything that is backed-up by this much garbage.

P.s. I didn't know there were snakes in New Zealand.. perhaps I can move back there...


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## GeckoJosh (Aug 18, 2012)

Whats the difference between farming crocs etc for skins/meat and farming mammals for the same purpose??


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## jairusthevirus21 (Aug 18, 2012)

Its not that damn hard to kill an animal humanely!!! perhaps education is the key to humane slaughters. All these people need is a fricken hammer!!!!


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## notechistiger (Aug 18, 2012)

I don't think people are really concerned about them skinning the animals for skins to sell or trade. I think it's more that they were skinned _alive_. I know I for one am absolutely disgusting with this kind of treatment to any animal. A while back I watched a video of Chinese fur farmers, where the animal (usually racoon dogs, foxes and the like) would be beaten, pinned up by it's tail and then skinned alive and thrown into a pile of other skinned animals, and left to die from shock and blood loss. These animals WERE alive, easy to see from the video of the practice. It was the single most disgusting thing I've seen on the internet (and that's saying something >.>).

Keeping an animal alive because "it's easier to skin that way" is such a bull***** excuse. It's disappointing that so so many people really have such a low opinion on lesser species. What does it say about them as humans?


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## geckoboy (Aug 18, 2012)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh what i'll do when i see one of those in shop i'll i'll set it fire and find out were it came from then i'll get a nano suit i'll fly over there then i'll go in stealth mode and do what they do to the snakes :x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x. Signing it right now


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## disintegratus (Aug 19, 2012)

While I am certainly against animal cruelty in all its forms, boycott the hell out of PETA. Ignorant, pathetic, scare-mongering, lying, manipulative fools the lot of them. They should all be shot. While we're at it, we should take down most of the animal-related "charities" as well. Most of them are bull*****.


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## longqi (Aug 19, 2012)

DanN said:


> What a complete load of crap!
> 
> The website posted has little basis in fact or reality. Yes, pythons are captured in the wild in places like Indonesia and skinned (not alive though!) for the fashion. Everybody is entitled to their opinion of this, however, this trade is one of the largest industries for Indonesia and is of significant benefit to local people. Moreover, this trade has been ongoing for 6 decades, yet there is no evidence that it is unsustainable.
> 
> ...



While I agree that that this article, along with most of PETA is badly faulted, the fact remains that snake hunters are catching fewer snakes in most Indonesian localities
Environmental destruction has played a major role in this too but if you talk to the skin hunters large retics are difficult to find now even in pristine areas in areas from Samarinda right through to Banjarmasin
Along the river front in Banjar there are 5 snake skin product manufacturers
Every one of their skins is wild caught
Every manufacturer is complaining because they cant get enough retic and burmese skins and have to use blood pythons as well now to supplement demand
3 of my better half's cousins were snake hunters but have given it away because they cant make a good living any more
The manufacturers in Sumatra are saying the same things
Although the trade has existed for many years it is only recently that finished products were made in Indonesia on a large scale for local sale to tourists
None of those skins goes down on the export list unless sold in commercial quantities

I know nothing aout Vietnam so cannot comment but in Indonesia it is much cheaper to use wild caught skins than to breed pythons up to the right size

So although PETA is a very dangerous and biased group in this case some of their information is correct

[I didnt sign either]


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## PMyers (Aug 19, 2012)

DanN said:


> The website posted has little basis in fact or reality.



Nor does anything else penned by the likes of PETA


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## sammumba (Aug 19, 2012)

just signed it


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## longqi (Aug 19, 2012)

be very careful signing anything to do with PETA
If they get their way there will be zero animals kept as pets 
pet reptile keeping is high on their agenda to get banned

they use partial and blatantly wrong data to get maximum exposure
very rarely is all the information correct

supporting anything they use can help get your pets banned


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## Snapped (Aug 19, 2012)

longqi said:


> be very careful signing anything to do with PETA
> If they get their way there will be zero animals kept as pets
> pet reptile keeping is high on their agenda to get banned
> 
> ...




Yes, this is true, they are a dangerous mob for sure.


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## DanN (Aug 19, 2012)

Hi Longqi,

Sustainability of the harvest is an ongoing debate, and unfortunately we will probably not have the answer until the population crashes. However, this hasn't happened yet, and reticulated pythons are probably better suited to high levels of harvest than many think (Burmese aren't harvested from the wild anywhere.. legally ).

There is no doubt that such large harvests result in population declines, but, similar to green pythons in the other thread, I don't think collection alone will ever result in the extinction of these snakes (at least on the mainland - in the GTP example, small island populations may be at risk).

For those that think the snakes are still alive while they are skinned - I'm not saying it doesn't happen occasionally, but it doesn't happen often. If you destroy the brain of any animal then it dies instantly - fact. Sure, it would be naive to think that every blow lands correctly, but this is the exception rather than the norm. There is no incentive whatsoever to keep the snakes alive while they are being skinned - so why do it?

I'm not condoning any part of this trade; I'm merely giving an unbiased viewpoint based on correct information - which is more than I can say for PETA.

If you have the urge to sign a petition, don't jump the gun by signing one that would suspend trade and endanger the livelihoods of many poor people - sign one that calls for more research into humane methods of slaughter and capacity building for local people to slaughter animals in a way that you (not they) find more socially acceptable.

Dan


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## longqi (Aug 20, 2012)

I fully understand about burmese but there are no farms in kalimantan breeding burmese yet possibly 20/30% of the finished products from there are definitely burmese
totally agree about island populations being very susceptible to over harvesting

somewhat agree about retics as we get many calls to relocate them even here in populated bali
but big females were first targets for skins and they are the prime breeding stock
with much fewer of them available now the crash might happen within 5 years 
when hunters stop hunting because of lack of targets something is wrong with the ecological balance in that area

peter


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## wylie88 (Aug 20, 2012)

Signed, it saddens me the things humans are capable of doing to animals.
The worst thing I have ever seen is called the meat video on youtube....it is utterly horrific....particularly what happens to the little chicks as soon as they hatch.


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## thomasssss (Aug 20, 2012)

DanN said:


> For those that think the snakes are still alive while they are skinned - I'm not saying it doesn't happen occasionally, but it doesn't happen often. If you destroy the brain of any animal then it dies instantly - fact. Sure, it would be naive to think that every blow lands correctly, but this is the exception rather than the norm. There is no incentive whatsoever to keep the snakes alive while they are being skinned - so why do it?



your right there , they hit them on the head with a big hammer , at least thats what i was told by one of my mums friends who owns a business in bali making handbags that are exported to america , his go for around $2000 though not really made for sale on the streets of bali , i wasnt real impressed when i first met him but its not like they skin them alive like has been said


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## DanN (Aug 21, 2012)

longqi said:


> I fully understand about burmese but there are no farms in kalimantan breeding burmese yet possibly 20/30% of the finished products from there are definitely burmese
> totally agree about island populations being very susceptible to over harvesting
> 
> somewhat agree about retics as we get many calls to relocate them even here in populated bali
> ...



For Longqi,

Couldn't attach the doc, so here is the link from google; 

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...6IGoBA&usg=AFQjCNEVcLJ9wK7JUrs-lL79PIl6EdA7MQ


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