The booming sales of snakeskin items

Deep in the Indonesian jungle, reticulated pythons are being slaughtered by the thousands. 

Not quickly, or humanely — but tantalisingly, agonisingly and monstrously slowly.

First, they are smashed on the head with a mallet — not hard enough to kill them, just to stun them, which makes it possible to wrench their jaws open and shove a hosepipe down their throats.

Their bodies are then filled with water and secured with elastic bands at both ends. 

This bloats them like balloons and makes it easier — once their heads are nailed to a meat hook and a couple of incisions have been made — to skin them with a few hard yanks, before their still-live bodies are thrown onto a pile.

But this doesn’t kill them.

Last month, Stephanie Scolaro was sentenced to 160 hours community service for illegally importing £17,000 worth of pink and gold python skin baseball caps

Because pythons have such low metabolic rates — their heartbeat can be as slow as 12 beats per minute — they live on and on, after being bludgeoned, inflated and skinned. Once in this state, it can take a couple of days of excruciating pain before they die of shock or dehydration.

What possible reason could there be to make the world’s longest snakes suffer in such a gruesome manner?

The fashion industry, of course! Namely, expensive, high-end, exotic-skins fashion — python bags, belts, shoes, boots, trainers, wallets, purses, credit card holders, baseball caps, you name it.

Little thought is given to the pythons, still writhing in pain for up to 48 hours. The only thing that matters are the reticulated python’s supple skin and diamond patterns, which are lovingly cleaned, carefully coiled and dried, before being sold for as little as £3 per kilo.

She sold the caps (pictured) for £450 a pop through her own website and  a Mayfair boutique and a menswear shop in Bexleyheath, Kent

She sold the caps (pictured) for £450 a pop through her own website and a Mayfair boutique and a menswear shop in Bexleyheath, Kent

Last month, Stephanie Scolaro, 26, an heiress and part-time swimwear model who couldn’t possibly have needed the money, was sentenced to 160 hours community service for illegally importing £17,000 worth of pink and gold python skin baseball caps.

She sold them for £450 a pop through her own website and via a Mayfair boutique and a menswear shop in Bexleyheath, Kent.

After her various court appearances, she pouted and scowled, stuck two immaculately manicured middle fingers up at the media and claimed she had been duped — that, unbeknown to her, the damning paperwork had been forged.

She insisted that she had no idea that any snakes had suffered, that she was an animal-lover who would never hurt a flea, far less skin it alive and turn it into an unnecessary fashion accessory. Had she known, she claimed, they were illegal, she would never have imported them.

Noble words, perhaps, and ones that probably reflect most people’s views.

Reticulated pythons are being slaughtered by the thousands deep in the Indonesian jungle (Pictured, a python hangs in a workshop for skinning snakes in Cirebon, Indonesia) 

Reticulated pythons are being slaughtered by the thousands deep in the Indonesian jungle (Pictured, a python hangs in a workshop for skinning snakes in Cirebon, Indonesia) 

The snakes are smashed on the head with a mallet ¿ not hard enough to kill them, just to stun them  (Pictured, a worker slices along the backbone to remove the skin)

The snakes are smashed on the head with a mallet — not hard enough to kill them, just to stun them (Pictured, a worker slices along the backbone to remove the skin)

For while most of us consider using real fur for clothes as a massive ethical faux pas (and, in response, most fashion houses have turned to artificial substitutes), less attention is given to exotic skins.

‘Snakes aren’t cute and cuddly in the same way foxes and rabbits are,’ says Yvonne Taylor, of the animal rights group PETA. ‘But just like mammals, they are sensitive to pain and suffering.’

Yet the traffic in exotic animals for flesh and skins is the third largest — after weapons and drugs — in the world. 

Every year, about 500,000 python skins are imported from South-East Asia to Europe legally, complete with the correct paperwork from CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which aims to protect specific species from extinction by regulating their trade).

Often they are sent to tanneries in Italy where the skin is chemically treated so it can be turned into designer accessories.

In addition to the legal trade, skins worth £600 million are imported illegally into Europe every year, often via Singapore. 

Supermodel Kate Moss, pictured at a Gucci party in 2014, popularised the snakeskin pattern in fashion

Supermodel Kate Moss, pictured at a Gucci party in 2014, popularised the snakeskin pattern in fashion

These may have dodgy CITES paperwork — as Scolaro’s allegedly had — or no paperwork, and are invariably wild snakes that have been hunted down by locals and ‘laundered’ through snake farms who sell them for vast sums.

In the wild and left to its own devices, a Burmese python will cover a territory of eight square miles and can expect to live for up to 30 years.

On a farm, a reticulated python — which can grow to about 30ft and weigh up to 20st — can barely uncoil and is lucky if it makes it past six months.

According to Clifford Warwick, a biologist and former snake farm investigator, many are kept in a ‘racking system in what look like haberdashery drawers in a vast warehouse’.

He adds: ‘Each tiny drawer contains one snake and the only natural light comes from a tiny opaque window at the front.’

When they grow out of this, they are transferred into wire crates, with hundreds of other snakes and, if they live long enough, to an individual large crate.

The fact is that snakes wither in captivity. They are prone to parasites, bacterial infections, problems with their immune systems and stress.

‘Snakes in cages show up to 30 different types of stress,’ says Mr Warwick.

They are fed on rats, mice and bits of chicken, but grow slowly — about 10ft in three years, which is far too long a time for most snake farmers’ balance sheets.

So they pay locals to hunt wild reticulated pythons — which are easy to catch with the help of a stick, a mallet and a hessian sack — and drop them off by the sack-load to be slaughtered.

Last week, Yuda Mukti, 39, a snake catcher from Kertasura Village in the Kapetakan District of Java, Indonesia, boasted that in the height of the rainy season — the optimum snake-hunting conditions — he can collect a ton of snakes in just three days.

He passes them on to a processing plant or ‘farm’ where they are either inflated with compressed air or water.

According to Mr Warwick, these farms are largely a front used to hide the fact that most pythons have been illegally hunted.

‘Though they always try to disguise them, if you look closely at a designer handbag or a boot you often see blemishes, little scars — scrapes and nicks they picked up in the wild,’ he says.

A worker at a workshop for skinning snakes handles a live snake brought in by a snake hunter in Cirebon, Indonesia

A worker at a workshop for skinning snakes handles a live snake brought in by a snake hunter in Cirebon, Indonesia

With today’s obsession in the West with veganism, vegetarianism, ethical food production and sustainable fashion, one might wonder who on earth would want to buy ‘luxury snakeskin accessories’? 

As PETA’s Yvonne Taylor puts it: ‘We’re already moving from what’s in your fridge to what’s in your wardrobe.’

Most millennials, however rich, wouldn’t be seen dead with a python bag on their arm.

Particularly when there’s now such a booming market for fake snake accessories made from embossed eco-friendly fabrics that are coloured to replicate the most beautiful pythons.

Indeed, some fashion houses have now stopped using exotic skins.

In December, Chanel, which previously sold handbags, coats and shoes made from snake, alligator and stingray skins, announced it would not use exotic animal pelts in future collections.

Flamboyant designer Vivienne Westwood has vowed to steer clear of exotic skins. Diane Von Furstenberg has followed suit.

However, Paris-based Kering, the company behind brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, is heading fast in the other direction.

In 2017, and to great fanfare, the company opened its own python farm in Thailand.

Bosses promised that the snakes would be raised in ‘the best conditions for animals, farmers and the eco system’ before they are turned into shoes, bags and belts.

Kering said it was aiming to provide a sustainable source of skins and made much of its CITES certification.

Every year, about 500,000 python skins are imported from South-East Asia to Europe legally, complete with the correct paperwork (Pictured, a factory in Pekalongan)

Every year, about 500,000 python skins are imported from South-East Asia to Europe legally, complete with the correct paperwork (Pictured, a factory in Pekalongan)

Which all sounds fine, of course, until you remember that Kering has invested its money not out of the goodness of its heart or a desire to protect these animals, but because of a vested interest in keeping the python and exotic skins trade going.

According to Clifford Warwick, there is no evidence that the conditions or slaughter methods used by these farms — in this case thought to be drowning in a crate — are much better.

‘Pythons are not humanely raised and they’re not humanely killed,’ he says.

‘It’s all about protecting the skin, not the animal’s welfare.’

He says that the only 100 per cent humane way is giving the snake a sedative followed by a lethal injection.

But while this is a cheap method and would protect the snake’s precious skin, it would render the snake meat unusable and bosses worry about the unsupervised use of toxic chemicals on their farms.

Meanwhile, back in Indonesia, the impact of the python trade ripples out. Removing hundreds of thousands of predators from the wild upsets the food chain.

Rats are their main prey — a python eats a dozen a month — and local explosions in the rat population result in plague epidemics and cause parasites to ravage rice fields — the staple local crop.

Even the hunters are exploited. They spend night after night combing through jungles and swamps to track down their quarry only to be paid pennies for something that will eventually sell for thousands of pounds and find its way onto the arm, back, head, waist or feet of someone who really should know better.

Or, just maybe, it won’t.

Because hopefully, anyone tempted to splash out on a python skin product, however beautiful the diamond pattern, however exquisite the workmanship, however festooned it is in CITES certifications, will remember the images of Stephanie Scolaro’s utterly tasteless £450 baseball caps.

And, hopefully, they will bring to mind Yvonne Taylor’s salutary words: ‘There is no such thing as an exotic ethical skin.’

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk