The alligator-hide business quadrupled between 1987 and 1995, says the Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States, where scores of farms flourish. While this is less than the 1990 peak of 816, it is considerably more than in 1986, when no alligator entered the country at all. Generally, it is only illegal to import reptiles that are caught in the wild, rather than farmed. Documentary footage from Asia shows that snakes and lizards are often skinned alive because dealers believe this practice makes the skin more supple. They can suffer for days before dying.
Fashion is supposed to be fun, but there's nothing amusing about killing animals in hideous ways.
We hope you will agree that exotic animals need their skins. The fashion-conscious, however, disagree. They feel they need the skins too. And this summer, many of them will think nothing of shelling out several thousand pounds for a lizard or snakeskin handbag. Just over a century ago, in 1892, when Louis Vuitton first introduced exotic-skin travelling bags and rigid suitcases, the story was much the same.