Animal-rights group’s ‘creepy’ pranks disgust leather shoppers

SCREENGRAB from ThePetaAsiaPacific YouTube

The environmental animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made a courageous statement once again, this time with their advocacy to encourage people to boycott leather products.

In a video uploaded by PETA Asia on video-sharing site YouTube, shoppers at a mall in Bangkok, Thailand, were busy wandering around a shop named “The Leather Work”, which happened to be a fake store set up by PETA. The leather goods displayed were of premium quality, but when shoppers opened a handbag or unbutton a jacket, they froze in bewilderment.

The animal-rights organization molded artificial skin and fake organs such as beating hearts and bloody veins inside the leather products. They also stuffed fake blood inside shoes and gloves.

The shoppers panicked in disgust and their unscripted reactions were filmed on the two-minute video clip.

According to PETA’s website, they selected to ‘prank’ shoppers in Thailand because of its widespread crocodile farming and slaughtering industry. On the other hand, many countries in Southeast Asia have gruesome and horrendous snakeskin industries which angered animal welfare groups such as PETA.

“Both crocodile and snakeskins are then shipped to tanneries for treatment and then exported from Southeast Asia to Western fashion houses in order to be stitched into luxury leather goods,” the animal welfare organization wrote on its website. “Every bit of animal skin, no matter how small, represents the intense suffering of all animals who are killed to make clothing.” Gianna Francesca Catolico