> Emmie Lister

In the arena of concern for animals, leather is fur’s poor cousin. Considering the amount of exposure that the cruelties of the fur industry receive, you’d think that leather would get some of the attention, but unfortunately the link between fur and leather is rarely considered - for what is leather but fur with the hair removed?

Whose skin are you in?

For almost every beautiful, living animal in the world, there seems to be a human ready to knock her on the head or slit her throat in order to peel the skin from her still warm body, treat it with noxious chemicals and turn it into a mundane item of footwear. When you buy leather, say People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, you are stealing someone else’s skin.

Most leather is produced from non-human animals held captive to the meat industry – adult cows and calves, as well as pigs, sheep, lambs and goats. Other non-human animals killed for their skin include zebras, bison, water buffalo, boars, deer, elephants, eel, sharks, dolphins, seals, walruses, frogs, lizards and snakes. Some local non-human animals exploited for their leather are kangaroos, crocodiles, emus and even barramundi. One enterprising Australian has recently devised a method for tanning the skins of chickens – he certainly won’t have any shortage of supply from the 4.5 billion chickens killed for their meat every year in this country. In fact, when you buy leather you may be buying the skin of dogs and cats slaughtered in appalling conditions for Asian tanneries. This leather is often falsely sold as cow leather. Because leather is rarely labelled with its place of origin, you will never know.

The means of obtaining the skin are often just as cruel as those of the fur industry. ‘Snakes and lizards are often skinned alive because of the widespread belief that live flaying imparts suppleness to the finished leather. Flayed snakes have been observed to take more than four days to die. Kid goats may be boiled alive to make kid gloves.’ Alligators and crocodiles may be beaten to death with hammers, axes and baseball bats. Much of the world’s leather is produced in India. Although the cow is a sacred creature in India, thousands of Indian cows and buffaloes are beaten and abused in order to force them across the border where they can be slaughtered and skinned with impunity. In some Indian slaughterhouses cattle have been observed crying in agony while they were skinned and dismembered alive.

Farmed non-human animals in the western world fare little or no better, despite our supposed concern for the welfare of the animals we exploit. The suffering of animals on factory farms is well-known – every bit of leather contains a history of exploitation and cruelty from birth to death. When a dairy cow’s milk production drops to an ‘unacceptable’ level, she will be sold for the value of her component parts. Her flesh becomes low-grade meat, her bones and blood fertiliser, and her skin leather. So too for unwanted calves, whose skin is softer and more valuable. Pigs suffer the cruelties of intensive farms and often violence during transport before they are slaughtered and their skin turned into pigskin products.

All the facets of these abhorrent and murderous industries are tied together – flesh, skin, milk, blood, hair, fat, eggs, bone - they cannot be separated out. One industry supports the other. Buy one product, and you’re supporting them all.

Excuses, excuses

A common excuse for leather is that it’s just a by-product of the meat industry – the non-human animals are killed for their meat, not their skin. As well as being plain silly, it also isn’t true.

PETA state that ‘since red meat consumption has been dropping since the late 1970s, the profits of the meat industry are largely dependent on the sale of animal hides. Skin accounts for 55-60% of the total by-product value of cattle.’

If you buy and wear leather, you are supporting all the cruelties of the meat industry.
‘Sales from inedible parts of the carcases, particularly hides, subsidise the meat industry significantly. Without the trade in leather it would be exceedingly difficult for slaughterhouses to show any profit.’

Leather is a natural product

Leather is often touted as a natural product, hence better for the environment than all those nasty synthetics. Mark Gold suggests for a start that we question the whole idea that it is natural to slaughter non-human animals for their skins at all.

Just as a fur coat made from ranched non-human animals takes 40 times as much energy as to make a fake fur coat , the leather industry consumes huge quantities of energy. The Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology states ‘On the basis of quantity of energy consumed per unit of product produced, the leather-manufacturing industry would be categorized with the aluminium, paper, steel, cement, and petroleum-manufacturing industries as a gross consumer of energy.’

The process that halts the natural rotting process of a fresh non-human animal skin and turns it into leather also creates large quantities of toxic waste. Some of the chemicals used in tanning include ‘mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal tar derivatives, and various oils, dyes and finishes, some of them cyanide-based.’ The heavy metal chromium is also used in tanning. Exposure to many of these chemicals has been associated with cancer in humans.

We don’t need to wear leather any more:

It is surprisingly easy to remove leather from your life. Alternatives exist for pretty much every leather product you can imagine. Many shoes are now made from totally synthetic materials, and cruelty-free natural fibres like canvas. A great plus is that often these synthetic shoes are cheaper than leather ones. There are specialty manufacturers around the world who create fake ‘leather’ goods from a synthetic material that stretches and breathes a lot like real leather. Australia’s own Vegan Wares is a good example. They also sell non-leather wallets, bags, belts and jackets.

Considering the abundance of alternatives to leather, and the fact that animals really do need their skin, why not consider rejecting this degenerate product?

Websites to look at:

PETA’s www.cowsarecool.com

For non-leather products:

www.veganwares.com
www.vegetarian-shoes.co.uk