WEBVTT - Part 1: Inside Australia's secretive crocodile skin industry 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:05.360 Yeah, every part on the bag is this is different. 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:06.560 This one is called a millionaire. 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:12.640 Yeah, it's called a millionaire for a reason. 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:16.320 Yeah. This story starts in the sunshine of Paris Fashion 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.079 Week in twenty twenty three, and. 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:21.919 This was when this pudgy yellow handbag was worn by 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:26.760 the musician for El Williams and he designed this handbag 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:30.960 for Louie Viton. It was called the Millionaire Speedy. 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:33.520 Yeah, well it comes with millionaires. 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:37.120 Oh and every bit of the every bit of the 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.559 bag is like the zipper, the zipper, the teeth on. 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:41.520 The zipper is going. 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.760 All the hardware, every rivit. 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:46.160 This is gold. 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:50.880 This is gold. Obviously, this chain is real. 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:54.080 The bag for all designed was made from the soft 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.959 skins of three or four young crocodiles, and. 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.680 It made a real splash among the fashion elite. It 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:04.399 was championed in Vogue and it served to upstage the 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:10.680 Ames Burken crocodile skin bag, which had this elite waiting list. 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:12.679 It was available only. 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:17.360 By invitation and it carried a million dollar price tag. 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.759 Celebrities across the globe were clambering for them. 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:24.560 The real housewives of everywhere. 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.959 Were wearing them, and so were figures like Kim Kardashian, 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:34.640 Martha Stewart and Beyonce and on TikTok Rihanna gushed about 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:38.320 the millionaire Speedy and she said, I would sell all 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:40.399 my purses to get this one. 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:43.080 You know what I really want in my closet, Like 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:45.160 I would sell all my purses just for this one. 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:49.360 It's the little Speedy crop Alvy monoground bag. 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:50.800 Ah amazing. 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.720 Somebody need get the crocodile skins that supply Louis Veton 0:01:56.080 --> 0:02:00.640 and Amez and most of the luxury fashion houses come 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:01.880 mostly from Australia. 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.800 Australia supplies most of the world's croc skins for luxury 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:11.000 goods and most crop factory farms are in Darwin. 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.400 Catherine Wilson is an award winning journalist. As she started 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:18.800 to look into the crocodile skin industry, she knew that 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.200 she had to visit Darwin and what she found when 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:24.240 she went was a booming one hundred million dollar industry 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:26.560 with a troubling underbelly. 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:30.639 I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven. 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:35.240 AM today Catherine Wilson on crop farming, conservation claims, and 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:41.480 the true cost of luxury fashion. It's Tuesday, August nineteenth, 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:43.079 and this is part one of a. 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:43.799 Two part series. 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:51.400 So, cath you recently went to Darwin to learn more 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:54.320 about these crocodile farms. Can you tell me what you 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.120 discovered about the way they operate and the types of 0:02:57.320 --> 0:02:59.160 conditions that the crocodile's are living in. 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.320 Yeah, it's lucky to have my trips sponsored by an 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:07.399 outfit called World Animal Protection through another Melbourne based organization 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:12.560 called Collective Fashion Justice, which advocates for ethical practices in 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:16.200 the fashion industry. Both these outfits have for years been 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.400 really keen to have media come and view the untold 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:24.799 conditions on these farms. So these facilities are called farms, 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:27.320 but it's probably a misnomer. 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:29.480 When we think of farms. 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:32.640 We might think of pastoral scenes or rural idols, but 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:37.640 these facilities are more akin to manufacturing plants and production 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:38.840 lines of crocs. 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:40.800 They wear house. 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:45.120 About one hundred and thirty thousand crops in the territory alone, 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:50.560 and they're huge castlele places with maximum security, so they're 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:53.600 really quite like prisons. And one of the first things 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:56.960 you notice outside these facilities is this weird, dank smell. 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:01.080 But it's probably best to discribe what you can see 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.600 in whistle blow of footage. 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.680 And this is footage taken partly. 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:10.760 By workers within these farms and also by animal activist investigators. 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:14.520 And what the footage shows are crocs that. 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:18.360 Are each housed in cages that are submerged in these 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:21.440 fast concrete channels or sumps where. 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:23.520 They're kept alive for two years. 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.720 Okay, so tell me a bit about how this one 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:32.160 hundred million dollar industry developed. How we got to this 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:36.160 point that Darwin is supplying these crocodile skins in such 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:37.159 a large scale. 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:41.200 Yeah, well, of course crocodiles have coexisted with indigenous people 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:44.920 in the territory for millennia, but they were feared by 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:49.560 settlers and by the nineteen seventies saltwater crops were hunted 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:50.760 almost to extinction. 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:55.480 The club is quite an ingenious a beat a rope 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:57.400 for the heavy log attached to it runs through a 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:01.200 polyblog to the running nood oh father. This is carefully 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:03.800 buried in the mud so the crocodile will not disturb it, 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:06.520 but put his head and shoulders through the loop to 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:07.240 reach the beak. 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:13.400 But then in seventy one, hunting was banned in the Territory, 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:20.560 and slightly later in Queensland and kroc populations started rapidly rebounding, 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:24.599 and then you had farming introduced from the nineteen eighties. 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:29.760 Now farming relies on collecting eggs from the wild and 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:31.479 bringing them back to farms. 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.560 Considering the great size of a crocodile, the eggs are 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.320 not so large as one might expect, being not such 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.479 a greatly larger than an ordinary hedn's egg. Both ends 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:43.599 of the egg are similar, there is no point at 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:45.560 end many. 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.480 Of the eggs have and farmers really needed social license 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:53.680 to extract these eggs from wild populations. So from the 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:59.360 nineteen eighties croc farmers identified as conservationists. They promoted their 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:04.719 trade as a profitable way to reduce pressure on wild populations. 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:07.200 And I think it just makes a lot of economic sense, 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:10.320 and it makes a lot of sense also for the 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:11.520 conservation of the animal. 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:16.240 This was a little bit of tricky messaging because the 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:19.919 eggs they extracted were on this one way ticket to 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:24.719 factory farms. The hatchlings were raised in the factories for 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:29.200 profit and never made it back into the wild. But 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.800 the industry's been kind of told another story. 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.200 This is a potentially dangerous, unloved animal, but if you 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:38.719 can make him worth money, people will tolerate him around. 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:44.599 Farmers and industry figures insisted that monetized incentives to collect 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.760 these eggs would help people accept crocs, and that the 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:54.039 conservation success story was achieved not by protecting crocs, but 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:57.159 by making crocs a financial. 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:59.200 Asset to local people. 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:04.560 This leief persists that croc skin commerce is responsible for 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:10.720 protecting and increasing crocodile numbers, but it recently came to 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.760 light that almost all of the positive messaging and research 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:20.240 cited to support crop farming arises either from the industry 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:28.720 itself or from government officials and advocates associated with this industry. 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:39.760 Coming up inside a crocodile cage path, you spoke to whistleblowers, 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:43.280 people who'd worked in these farms. Can you tell me 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:45.600 a bit about what they said to you about the 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:47.320 conditions and the way that things operate. 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:47.800 Yeah. 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:51.920 The whistleblowers have so far documented four crop factories in 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:58.000 the Darwin regions, and the conditions they've documented are pretty shocking. 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:00.520 But these conditions. 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.880 Can't be legally challenged because they're within standards set by 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.720 the federal government's Code of practice, So this code allows 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.360 a quarter to half a square meter of cage space 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:16.880 per crocodile, in which they typically can't fully extend their 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:20.040 bodies once they market ready. 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:23.560 My name is Donnie in Belong. My family's jiro So 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:25.960 from about three and a half hours south of here. 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:31.800 One of the former indigenous workers in these farms, Donnie 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:35.600 in Belong, described how his work involved this production line 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:41.120 scenario where his coworker was electrocuting each croc to stun them, 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:44.800 and Donny had to drag them out and ductate their 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:46.600 snouts shutge. 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:49.240 So I had to job was to flip around if 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:50.480 the croc has been difficult, had to try and get 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:52.960 him out to the end with the opening, and once 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:55.000 I got him there the off side, I would zap 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:57.480 him for about ten seconds stun it, and then I'd 0:08:57.480 --> 0:09:00.360 have to open the cage door and tape the mouth 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:04.800 and eyes shut and then flip it up belly up 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:06.280 on the top of the cage, and then the boss 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:09.400 would come around and inspect the belly between the front 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:13.400 and hind legs. That was the most valuable part of 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:13.880 the body. 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:19.120 And they're waiting these cages for slaughter, which was a 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.559 terribly drawn out process that involves a practice called pissing, 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:25.480 in which a worker has to force a steel rod 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.719 into the croc's brain to scramble it. So you can 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:33.120 imagine the impact not just on the croc, but on 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.240 the workers having to perform this work. 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:37.240 And Donny describes. 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:39.560 How he felt the croc's spirit had been crushed. 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:41.720 Would get a bit of a lump in my throat 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.120 doing it and sort of seeing the state of them, 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:48.440 and felt like the spirit was crushed or defeated in 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:51.960 a way like you've seeing these animals reduced to yeah, 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:53.600 just yeah. 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.280 And we have to remember that the crocodile is a 0:09:56.320 --> 0:10:00.240 sacred totem species for many Aboriginal people in North and. 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.720 Australia, and it does feel very colonial still. It's like, 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:09.480 you know, the colony providing the resources for the mother country. 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.600 It is a very colonial industry. 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.839 I also spoke with elders and traditional owners and an 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.160 ex croc farmer who said farmers were ripping off ranchers 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.480 and ranches are the people on the ground collecting eggs, 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:29.839 often indigenous communities. Each of these eggs is sold to 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:32.480 farms for around twenty five bucks. 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:35.199 So you can see there's this million. 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:38.559 Dollar handbag at the high end, and on the ground, 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.960 on the other hand, ranchers risking their lives mucking around 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.120 in these sludgy swampness to find eggs that might get 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:49.000 them twenty five bucks each. And that's only if the 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:51.240 croc farmer deemed some viable. 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:58.240 And so As more information about these farms and the 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:02.480 way the industry works comes to light, is the fashion 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.680 industry responding of people's understandings changing. 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:07.240 Yeah. 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:12.600 Look, animal advocates are becoming a huge force, and they 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:16.920 have among them some luminaries like Chris Darwin, who is 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:22.520 Charles Darwin's great great grandson. And by last year groups 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:26.000 like Collective Fashion Justice and Defend the Wild and Peter 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:32.800 had successfully lobbied fashion weeks in London, in Berlin, Copenhagen, 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:38.040 Amsterdam and Melbourne to ban wild skins of armies. 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.600 Suppliers in the US and Africa found there for every 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:48.600 army's watchband or broken bags, crocodiles and alligators suffered miserable lives. 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:52.920 And this was following very graphic catwalk disruptions around the 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:56.640 world in which placards showed the conditions on these farms 0:11:57.280 --> 0:12:01.960 and many luxury brands, including Chanelle and Vivian Westwood, have 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:04.440 now resolved to divest from animal skins. 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:08.760 Victoria, Chanell, Vivian Westwood, all of these brands have already 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.440 brown exotic skins, and the Clemans doesn't do it soon, 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:12.760 they will be left behind. 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:18.600 In Australia, David Jones has also committed to phasing out 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:20.800 skins by twenty twenty six. 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:26.000 And at the heart of the story PATHA the crocodiles themselves. 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:30.320 So tell me about the research into what these animals 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:33.240 are like and what you learned about them as a species. 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:39.359 Yeah, crocodiles get really bad press, but they're really astonishing creatures. 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:46.360 They've been billed as evolution's greatest survivors as they're pretty 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:51.640 much the same as their Triassic ancestors, which existed, as 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.480 you'd know, well before dinosaur extinction. And in recent years 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.920 scientists have found them to be emotive and creative and 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:04.000 playful and curios. They have language, they use tools. For example, 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.360 they've been observed coordinating a complex. 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:08.920 Of sticks as lures to. 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:15.240 Entrap nesting birds, and by many measures, they're more sentient, 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:18.800 or at least more sensitive than us because they have 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:20.800 these unique perceptive systems. 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.920 These little organs embedded. 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:27.080 In nodules across their bodies of very same anatomies as 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:32.000 their deep time ancestors, and so, for example, when crocodiles 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:38.320 are submerged, their little nerve fibers can detect these signature vibrations. 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:38.520 Of other animals. 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.760 And the reason we know about all this is partly 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.920 because of the work of two Darwin based scientists, one 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:51.920 Graham Web and the other named Adam Britten, whose research 0:13:52.040 --> 0:14:02.080 is now under a huge cloud. 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:07.120 This was part one of a two part series. In 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.200 the next episode, kath Wilson finds out how the scientific 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.439 work of a criminal animal abuser underpins the claims of 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.920 conservation at the heart of the crocodile skin industry. It's 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.920 called Part two, Crocodiles, Crimes and Conservation Claims, and it's 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:22.200 in your feed right now.