Snakeskin has become the latest must-have and designer labels including Jimmy Choo, Donna Karan, Mulberry, Gucci, Prada, Roberto Cavalla and Yves Saint Laurent have all used it in coats, bags and boots.
Celebrities such as Kylie Minogue, who was recently photographed with a python skin handbag, and Sienna Miller, seen in snakeskin boots, are encouraging an illicit trade that can
have terrible consequences for fragile eco-systems around the world. Python shoes, boots, belts, jackets and skirts are being fashioned from snakes’ skin. The fashion industry insists the skins are farmed (as if this is less cruel) but this is completely untrue. There is a thriving illegal trade in South-
East Asia and South America. The regional program officer in South-East Asia for Traffic, an international monitoring network says” "I have been to visit dozens of so-called
python 'farms' but only one of them was breeding pythons. The rest were using the farms as a cover for pythons caught in the wild." South East Asian countries like Thailand,
Cambodia, China and Vietnam claim to farm snakes. But trade watchers say that there cannot be any snake farms because pythons take too long to mature and are too expensive to rear in captivity. These farms simply pay villagers per snake they catch from the wild. The myth that villagers grow snakes and depend on them for their livelihood is also untrue as they are paid so little per snake that farming is not a viable option. Unfortunately, while governments know that the snake farms are a myth, they allow these snake skins to be “ legal”. More than 350,000 skins of the reticulated python species were legally imported into the EU in 2005 and this has increased in the next three years. There is no record of snake farms raising so many adult snakes a year. The illegal trade is at least that large. Which proves that over 1 million snakes have been caught in the wild yearly for Europe and America. 1985 to 1998, the last year for which data are available from that country,
Indonesia exported more than 4.5 million pythons, either skinned or alive. Snakes are caught in the wild at 3-4 years old in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, New Zealand, Sri
Lanka, India and the Philippines. They are sent to the manufacturing markets of the U.S., EU, Canada and China. This fashion trend is disastrous for one of the world's longest, most magnificent and least
threatening snakes. It is already resulting in plagues of rats (their prey) in South-East Asia and Africa.
To convert pythons into profits, Indonesia's snake-harvesting industry relies on an army of catchers who work in groups in the jungles and grassland, settings nets, traps and baited hooks for the blood pythons and the larger reticulated
pythons. Captured snakes are stored in canvas bags and sold to primitive skinning plants. In Indonesia alone the industry employs about 175,000 people of which 150,000 are snake
catchers – which proves that that “farmed” snakes are a myth. The rest are skinners and international sales agents, according to the Indonesian Reptile and Amphibian Trade
Association, which represents licensed tanneries and reptile-product exporters. Snakes killed for their skin are often nailed to trees and skinned alive before being tossed into a pile to die. They can suffer for days before succumbing to shock or dehydration. Pythons often have a hose inserted into their mouth and are pumped full of water to make them easier to skin.

Products.

These fashion accessories must cost a fortune.

mekybabe1:
These fashion accessories must cost a fortune.

Yea, they are really expensive.