We are pro-consumer choice. If people want to eat meat, own a pet, or wear a fur coat, that’s their choice. That’s in contrast to animal rights extremists, such as PETA, who don’t believe anyone should be allowed to have the rights to choose.
We’re also in favor of judging people by their own standards. So since the fashion brand Gucci has jumped into bed with PETA, let’s judge Gucci through the lens of PETA’s extreme ideology.
Recently, Gucci announced that it was giving in to PETA’s demands and going “fur-free.” This is effectively just a PR move—Gucci uses little fur. But Gucci does sell lots and lots of leather products.
PETA, of course, is against leather. According to PETA: “With every pair of leather shoes that you buy, you sentence an animal to a lifetime of suffering.” Additionally, PETA claims, “Leather is also no friend of the environment, as it shares responsibility for all the environmental destruction caused by the meat industry as well as the pollution caused by the toxins used in tanning.”
This isn’t accurate. It would be wasteful not to use leather, since it’s a byproduct of raising beef cattle. (And ironically, PETA-approved fake fur appears to be less environmentally friendly than natural fur.)
But facts don’t matter when you’re casting your lot with ideologues. So by the standards of Gucci’s new radical “partner” PETA, Gucci is still causing millions of animals to suffer to make overpriced handbags, while hurting the environment. We can envision some PETA ads with a crazed Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri wielding a bloody knife like a serial killer. The “Butcher of Florence” or “Marco the Ripper,” would be the headline.
Perhaps then Gucci would understand a simple point: It is short-sighted and self-defeating to cave in to extreme lifestyle dictators such as PETA who continually move the goalposts and want to undermine your entire business.
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