ROCHELLE RELF TO POSE AS ‘SLAUGHTERED CROCODILE’ TO PROTEST CRUELTY TO REPTILES FOR HERMÈS BAGS

Model to Use Her Public Profile to Highlight That Live Reptiles Are Sawn Open

For Immediate Release:
10 August 2015

Sydney – Rochelle Relf, the Australian model who is reported to have “enjoyed a night of passion” with Khloe Kardashian’s love interest James Harden, will lie on a “bloodied” stand, nearly naked and bodypainted to look like a slaughtered crocodile outside the Hermès Sydney CBD store tomorrow. The action comes in the wake of PETA US’ exposé of farms that supply crocodile and alligator skins to Hermès-owned tanneries, which revealed that reptiles were kept 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.

Where:       Outside the Hermès store at 135 Elizabeth St, Sydney
When:        Tuesday, 11 August, 1 pm

“I’m taking part in this event because I found out that PETA US’ exposé reveals a grisly source of Hermès’ ‘luxury’ accessories – living, feeling animals who were mutilated and left to die slowly and painfully”, says Relf. “We’re calling on Hermès to stop profiting from these animals’ miserable lives and deaths by taking exotic skins off the shelves for good.”

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 at one facility was believed to be malfunctioning, the 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.

Relf – who recently revealed details of her steamy night with basketball star James Harden to New Idea magazine – says, “Once I heard about what happens to these animals for their skins, I knew I had to use my profile for a good cause and draw attention to their suffering”.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.au. 

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