"From Balenciaga’s £845-a-pair high-top black python trainers for men to a full-length trenchcoat sported by Rihanna, snakeskin – or python in particular – is having something of a fashion moment. Demand for the luxury patterned leather is riding so high that Kering – the company behind big brands including Gucci, Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen – has built its own python farm. The Paris-based company has set up a farm in Thailand, complete with breeding stock, and the snakes will be raised in “the best conditions for animals, farmers and the ecosystem” before they are turned into shoes, bags and belts.
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If we look at the whole article we can see that the central theme is about the use of exotic animal skins for fashion.
From the article:
"Marie-Claire Daveu, chief sustainability officer for Kering, said: “This is a long-term commitment to developing sustainable and responsible sourcing of Kering’s python skins – it takes time to ensure this is done to the highest standards.” The farm, she said, was intended to secure the supply of skins and show how farming could be done sustainably and humanely."
What about animal rights/abuse and externalities?
There's a paper here which, according to the abstract. considers these externalities:
"Animal welfare is emerging as one of the most controversial issues in modern livestock agriculture. Although consumers can buy free range products in niche markets, some have argued that existing markets cannot solve the animal welfare dilemma because there are individuals who care about animal well-being who do not eat animal products. This paper proposes a market-based solution to at least partially manage animal welfare externalities. After discussing the current lack of market incentives to promote farm animal well-being, a potential scheme to quantify and trade units of farm animal well-being is proposed. The potential merits and efficacy of an animal welfare market are also discussed."
There's an interesting article here that concludes...
"It would be perfectly logical for the government to impose a greenhouse gas tax on suppliers. The production and consumption of meat creates significant negative externalities in the form of public health issues, the environment and climate change. We should all be wondering why the meat industry has been excluded from the carbon tax."
There's a blog here that concludes:
"Leaving cows to breed freely and not be consumed by humans is a worse externality on our society than eating them. By being a meat eater, I am creating a positive externality on our planet by keeping animals from over breeding, crowding out humans, destroying fertile land, and generally destroying the environment."
Finally there is this paper here that says in the introduction:
"Laws criminalizing animal abuse should apply to the agricultural industry. When we exempt the agricultural industry from these laws, factory farms increase production to unnaturally high levels. This increased production causes devastating environmental effects, such as climate change, water shortages, and the loss of topsoil. In light of these effects, the law needs to do much more to regulate the agricultural industry, and the first step should
be to criminalize cruelty to agricultural animals. This would force the industry to slow down production to more natural levels that are much less harmful to the environment."
