WEBVTT - Part 1: The true cost of crocodile skin 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:05.400 Yeah, every part on the bag is this is different. 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:10.960 This one is called a millionaire. Yeah, it's called a 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:12.680 millionaire for a reason. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:13.039 Yeah. 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.599 This story starts in the sunshine of Paris Fashion Week 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:17.960 in twenty twenty three. 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.680 And this was when this pudgy yellow handbag was worn 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:25.800 by the musician for El Williams and he designed this 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:27.880 handbag for Louie Viton. 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:31.000 It was called the Millionaire Speedy. 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:35.919 Yeah, well it comes with millionaires. Oh and every bit 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:38.720 of the every bit of the bag is like the zipper, 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:40.519 the zipper, the teeth on. 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.240 The zippers going, all the hardware. 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:46.200 Every rivit. This is gold. 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:47.440 This is gold. 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:51.320 Obviously, this chain is real. Peel. 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:54.080 The bag for all designed was made from the soft 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.480 skins of three or four young crocodiles. 0:00:56.800 --> 0:00:59.400 And it made a real splash among the fashion elite. 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:04.160 It was championed in Vogue and it served to upstage 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:09.480 the Ameres Burken crocodile skin bag, which had this elite 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:14.319 waiting list. It was available only by invitation and it 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:19.880 carried a million dollar price tag. Celebrities across the globe 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:21.800 were clambering for them. 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:24.600 The real housewives of everywhere. 0:01:24.160 --> 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 --> 0:01:38.319 the millionaire Speedy and she said, I would sell all 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:40.440 my purses to get this one. 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:43.080 You know what I really want in my closet, Like, 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:45.200 I would sell all my purses just for this one. 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:49.400 It's the lot speedy, crap alvy monoground bag. 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:50.800 Ah amazing. 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:55.360 Somebody need to get the crocodile skins that supply Louis 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:59.840 Veton and Amez and most of the luxury fashion houses 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:01.880 come mostly from Australia. 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.800 Australia supplies most of the world's croc skins for luxury 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.080 goods and most crop factory. 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:11.000 Farms are in Darwin. 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.440 Catherine Wilson is an award winning journalist. As she started 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:18.800 to look into the crocodile skin industry, she knew that 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.200 she had to visit Darwin and what she found when 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:24.280 she went was a booming, one hundred million dollar industry 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:29.960 with a troubling underbelly. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:34.960 to seven AM today Katherine Wilson on crop farming, conservation claims, 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:39.919 and the true cost of Luxury Fashion. It's Friday, January nine, 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:42.200 and this is part one of a two part series 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:44.280 which was originally published in August. 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:47.160 So, cath you. 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:51.920 Recently went to Darwin to learn more about these crocodile farms. 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:54.480 Can you tell me what you discovered about the way 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:58.320 they operate and the types of conditions that the crocodile's. 0:02:57.840 --> 0:02:58.280 Are living in. 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:01.280 Yet, I was lucky to have my trip sponsored by 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:05.800 an outfit called World Animal Protection through another Melbourne based 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:11.600 organization called Collective Fashion Justice, which advocates for ethical practices 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:15.079 in the fashion industry. Both these outfits have for years 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:17.800 been really keen to have media come and view the 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:23.919 untold conditions on these farms. So these facilities are called farms, 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:26.440 but it's probably a misnomer. 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:27.440 When we think of. 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:31.400 Farms, we might think of pastoral scenes or rural idols, 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:36.240 but these facilities are more akin to manufacturing plants and 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:37.960 production lines of crocs. 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:39.920 They wear house. 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:44.240 About one hundred and thirty thousand crocs in the territory alone, 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:49.680 and they're huge castoral places with maximum security, so they're 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.720 really quite like prisons. And one of the first things 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:55.200 you notice outside these facilities. 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:56.080 Is this weird dank smell. 0:03:56.560 --> 0:04:00.160 But it's probably best to describe what you can see 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:03.920 in whistle blow of footage, and this is footage taken 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:08.040 partly by workers within these farms and also by animal 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:09.880 activist investigators. 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.080 And what the footage shows are crocs that are each 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:16.160 housed in cages that are. 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:20.560 Submerged in these fast concrete channels or sumps where. 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:22.640 They're kept alive for two years. 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:27.840 Okay, so tell me a bit about how this one 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.280 hundred million dollar industry developed. How we got to this 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:35.280 point that Darwin is supplying these crocodile skins in such 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:36.279 a large scale. 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.320 Yeah, well, of course crocodiles have coexisted with indigenous people 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:44.040 in the territory for millennia, but they were feared by 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:48.680 settlers and by the nineteen seventies saltwater crops were hunted 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:49.880 almost to extinction. 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.680 The club is quite an ingenious affair. A rope for 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.080 the heavy log attached to it runs through a polyblog 0:04:57.200 --> 0:04:59.760 to the running ned. The lower part of this is 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.280 have me buried in the mud so the crocodile will 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:05.000 not disturb it, but put his head and shoulders through 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:06.360 the loop to reach the beak. 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.880 But then in seventy one, hunting was banned in the 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:18.280 territory and slightly later in Queensland, and kroc populations started 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:19.680 rapidly rebounding. 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:20.680 And then you have. 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:26.200 Farming introduced from the nineteen eighties. Now farming relies on 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:31.120 collecting eggs from the wild and bringing them back to farms. 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.680 Contendering the great size of a crocodile. The eggs are 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:36.440 not so large as one might expect, being not such 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:40.599 a greatly larger than an ordinary hen's egg. Both ends 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:42.719 of the egg are similar, there is no point at 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:45.160 end many of the eggs. 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:49.880 And farmers really needed social license to extract these eggs 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:54.800 from wild populations. So from the nineteen eighties croc farmers 0:05:54.960 --> 0:06:00.599 identified as conservationists. They promoted their trade as a profitable 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.719 way to reduce pressure on wild populations. 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:06.320 And I think it just makes a lot of economic sense, 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:09.440 and it makes a lot of sense also for the 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:10.640 conservation of the animal. 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:15.360 This was a little bit of tricky messaging because the 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:19.039 eggs they extracted were on this one way ticket to 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:23.839 factory farms. The hatchlings were raised in the factories for 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:28.320 profit and never made it back into the wild. But 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:31.920 the industry's been kind of told another story. 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:35.320 This is a potentially dangerous, unloved animal, but if you 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:37.839 can make him worth money, people will tolerate him around. 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:43.719 Farmers and industry figures insisted that monetized incentives to collect 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:47.880 these eggs would help people accept crocs, and that the 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:53.159 conservation success story was achieved not by protecting crocs, but 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.279 by making crocs a financial. 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:58.320 Asset to local people. 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:03.480 So this belief persists that croc skin commerce is responsible 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:07.160 for protecting and increasing crocodile numbers. 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:09.960 But it recently came to. 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.880 Light that almost all of the positive messaging and research 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:19.360 cited to support crop farming arises either from the industry 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:25.600 itself or from government officials and advocates associated with this industry. 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:38.880 Coming up inside a crocodile cage path. You spoke to whistleblowers, 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:42.400 people who'd worked in these farms. Can you tell me 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:44.720 a bit about what they said to you about the 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:46.920 conditions and the way that things operate. Yeah. 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:51.040 The whistleblowers have so far documented four crop factories in 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:57.120 the Darwin regions, and the conditions they've documented are pretty shocking. 0:07:58.000 --> 0:07:59.760 But these conditions. 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:03.000 Can't be legal challenged because they're within standards set by 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:05.080 the federal government's Code of Practice. 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.400 So this code allows a quarter to half. 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:12.679 A square meter of cage space per crocodile, in which 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:19.160 they typically can't fully extend their bodies once they market ready. 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:22.680 My name is Donnie in Belong. My family's jiro So 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.080 from about three and a half hours south of here. 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:30.920 One of the former indigenous workers in these farms, Donnie 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:34.720 in Belong, described how his work involved this production line 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:40.240 scenario where his coworker was electrocuting each croc to stun them, 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:43.920 and Donny had to drag them out and ductate their 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:45.520 snouts shute. 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:48.360 So I had to job was to flip around. If 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:49.600 the croc was been difficult, had to try and get 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.080 him out to the end with the opening, and once 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:54.120 I got him there the off side, I would zap 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:56.600 him for about ten seconds stun it, and then I'd 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.440 have to open the cage door and tape the mouth 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:03.920 and I show and then flip it up belly up 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:05.400 on the top of the cage, and then the boss 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:08.520 would come around and inspect the belly between the front 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:12.520 and hind legs. That was the most valuable part of 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:13.000 the body. 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:18.240 And they're waiting these cages for slaughter, which was a 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.679 terribly drawn out process that involves a practice called pissing 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:24.600 in which a worker has to force a steel rod 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:27.839 into the croc's brain to scramble it. So you can 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:32.240 imagine the impact not just on the croc, but on 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:34.360 the workers having to perform this work. 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:36.360 And Donny describes. 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:39.160 How he felt the croc's spirit had been crushed. 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:40.840 Would get a bit of a lump in a throat 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:43.240 doing it and sort of seeing the state of them, 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:47.560 and felt like the spirit was crushed or defeated in 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.080 a way like you've seeing these animals reduced to yeah, 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:52.720 just yeah. 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.440 And we have to remember that the crocodile is a 0:09:55.440 --> 0:10:00.400 sacred totem species for many Aboriginal people in Northern Australia. 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.040 And it does feel very colonial still. It's like, you know, 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:09.160 the colony providing the resources for the mother country. It 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:11.720 is a very colonial industry. 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.959 I also spoke with elders and traditional owners and an 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:20.400 ex croc farmer who said farmers were ripping off ranches 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.560 and ranches are the people on the ground collecting eggs, 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.959 often indigenous communities. Each of these eggs is sold to 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:31.600 farms for around twenty five bucks. 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.400 So you can see there's this million. 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:37.679 Dollar handbag at the high end, and on the ground, 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:42.080 on the other hand, ranchers risking their lives mucking around 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.640 in these sludgy swampness to find. 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.319 Eggs that might get them twenty five bucks each. And 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:49.959 that's only if the croc farmer deems them viable. 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:57.360 And so as more information about these farms and the 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:01.600 way the industry works comes to light, is the fashion 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:05.800 industry responding of people's understandings changing. 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:06.360 Yeah. 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:11.720 Look, animal advocates are becoming a huge force, and they 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:16.040 have among them some luminaries like Chris Darwin, who is 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:21.640 Charles Darwin's great great grandson. And by last year, groups 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.080 like Collective Fashion Justice and Defend the Wild and Peter 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:31.920 had successfully lobbied Fashion Weeks in London, in Berlin, Copenhagen, 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:37.160 Amsterdam and Melbourne to ban wild skins of armies. 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:40.720 Suppliers in the US and Africa found there for every 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:47.720 army's watchband or broken bag, crocodiles and alligators suffered miserable lives. 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:52.040 And this was following very graphic catwalk disruptions around the 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.760 world in which placards showed the conditions on these farms, 0:11:56.400 --> 0:12:00.880 and many luxury brands, including Chanelle and v and Westwood 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.560 have now resolved to divest from animal skins. 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:08.160 Victoriaew Bibian, Westwood, all of these brands have already brows 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:09.280 exotic skins. 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:11.040 And a Clemans doesn't do it soon, they will be 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:11.880 left behind. 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:17.720 In Australia, David Jones has also committed to phasing out 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:19.920 skins by twenty twenty six. 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:25.120 And at the heart of the story PATHA the crocodiles themselves. 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:29.440 So tell me about the research into what these animals 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:32.360 are like and what you learned about them as a species. 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:38.479 Yeah, crocodiles get really bad press, but they're really astonishing creatures. 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:45.480 They've been billed as evolution's greatest survivors as they're pretty 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:50.760 much the same as their Triassic ancestors, which existed, as 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:54.600 you'd know, well before dinosaur extinction. And in recent years 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:58.040 scientists have found them to be emotive and creative and 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:03.120 playful and curious. They have language, they use tools. For example, 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:06.480 they've been observed coordinating a complex. 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.040 Of sticks as lures to. 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:14.360 Entrap nesting birds, and by many measures, they're more sentient 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.920 or at least more sensitive than us because they have 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:19.920 these unique perceptive systems. 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:22.679 These little organs embedded in. 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:26.480 Nodules across their bodies of very same anatomies as their 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:32.200 deep time ancestors, and so, for example, when crocodiles are submerged, 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:37.440 their little nerve fibers can detect these signative vibrations. 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:40.319 Of other animals. And the reason we know about all this. 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:45.000 Is partly because of the work of two Darwin based scientists, 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:50.120 one Graham Web and the other named Adam Britschen, whose 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.240 research is now under a huge cloud. 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.680 This was part one of a two part series. In 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.839 the next episode, cath Wilson finds out how the scientific 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.200 work of a criminal animal abuser underpins the claims of 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.840 conservation at the heart of the crocodile skin industry. It's 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.600 called Part two, Crocodiles and Criminals, and it's in your 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:22.360 feed right now.