With the more recent news of fashion industry giant Hermes breeding crocodiles to keep up with the demand for their exotic skin handbags, which can fetch nearly $50,000 at retail, (each bag supposedly requires hides from three to four crocs), Hermes has opened more farms, mostly in Australia.

“We have massive over-demand. We are limited by our ability to train new craftsmen,” Hermes CEO Patrick Thomas told Reuters at its Global Luxury Summit in Paris earlier this month.

While many cows are bred for slaughter for humans to enjoy their meat for food and skins for leather, there’s something even more unsettling about factory-farming the croc who’s been here since the dinosaurs.

Am I giving more worth to a croc than a cow? For this article? Yes, since (at the very least), I couldn’t find any information on whether they sold the meat and especially since a handbag from Hermes is going for an outlandish $50,000.

All the animal slaughtering actually makes me want to run, hide and eat berries.

In the meantime, here are some ideas I have for helping Thomas out of his tight predicament so he can get those craftsmen working:

1.    For all the women who buy $50,000 bags from you, maybe you can get the skin they’ve recently had nipped and tucked and made into celebrity skin bags.
2.    Send out your untrained craftsmen to all the high-end consignment boutiques possible and grab vintage purses and say you’re launching a retro line.
3.    Pitch a reality TV show where a posse of frisky Hermes higher-ups go down under and live with the crocodiles with nothing but cuticle clippers as their weapon. People will love your new branding as cowards and demand will slacken.
4.    Have everyone working at Hermes go on a pure crocodile diet so you can say that all crocs were raised for food, not skins.
5.    Consider a croc crop substitute like eco-leather made from 80% cotton and 20% synthetic micro-fibre and watch as the new eco-celebrities line up and make you famous again not for how dumb your actions are but for how sane your actions are. It’s worth a try.

After all is said and done, in fashion, some things are just blatantly worse than others.

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