For Immediate Release:
29 May 2003
Contact:
Anuradha Sawhney (0) 98201 22602; AnuradhaS@peta.org
Mumbai — TV star and top pinup Pamela Anderson has written, on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), to the country's top fashion designers, imploring them to use 'ethical, stylish' leather alternatives, not real skins, in their creations. In her letter, Anderson explains that cows, buffaloes, goats, pigs and sheep — and even cats, dogs and horses, whose skins are imported into India — are killed for their skins, as well as for their flesh. She has sent each designer a copy of PETA's guide to leather alternatives and a heartbreaking VCD showing the fear and pain animals go through when they are killed for their skins.
Around the world, animals are forced to endure the horrors of factory farming, which include severe overcrowding, denial of fresh air and sunshine, forced separation from their mothers and painful mutilations, such as castration and taildocking, which are performed without anesthetics. At slaughter, animals are often skinned or dismembered while fully conscious.
From Maharastra to Tamil Nadu and points north, illegal transportation of cows, buffaloes, sheep and goats used for handbags, shoes and meat has become a national problem. The animals are marched - often for hundreds of miles - in the scorching heat, without food or water. Animals who are transported on overcrowded lorries routinely suffer broken bones, and the young, elderly and frail often suffocate in the crush of bodies. According to one report: 'The Indian leather industry handles approximately 230 million metres of hides and skins annually.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 24,300,000 cattle, 46,700,000 goats and 16,000,000 pigs were killed [in 2000] in India. These figures pertain to the 3,600 legally operating abattoirs and do not include animals killed in the estimated 32,000 illegal or unlicensed ones.'
'I hope that you will join the growing number of designers who choose not to work with skins and instead use progressive, cruelty-free materials', writes Anderson, who is a longtime vegetarian and wears no leather. 'Please, won't you join me in this campaign to help the most innocent victims of fashion by pledging not to use their skins?'
PETA's 'Synthetic Alternatives to Animal Skins' guide is available upon request.
