Have you ever wondered about the animal who died so people could wear leather shoes, jackets, and bags?
Strongheart and Emma at
Liberation
Sanctuary
1. Cows feel, and want to live
Leather is most often the skin of a cow. Cows are feeling, thinking
beings. Cows have complex social lives just like humans. They see some cows
as close friends and others as just acquaintances, just like we do. They
play together, are curious and even become excited when they learn something
new.
Cows want to live just like we do, and when we wear their skin, it is
because their life has been stolen from them. It is never humane to kill
someone who does not want to die.
2. Your leather bag could be made of a baby
A mother, Clarabelle, and her baby at
Edgar’s Mission sanctuary
Much of the highest quality leather comes from babies. Because calves are
younger, their skin is softer, just like a human baby’s skin is. Bobby
calves seen as wastage in the dairy industry are skinned for their ‘valuable
hides’.
RSPCA Australia states that ‘vealer’ calves usually grow up on specialist
calf-rearing properties and are generally reared in groups in sheds, their
skins are worth good money.
3. Slaughtered mothers and their unborn babies
Some leather is called slink or slunk leather, and it is known as the
very softest, most supple leather available. This leather is made from the
skin of an unborn baby cow.
These babies come from mother cows who are sent to a slaughterhouse while
pregnant, sometimes days off birthing. The Department of Primary Industries
NSW states that ‘quite a high proportion of cull cows are pregnant’. Once
the mother has been killed, the baby is cut out of their mother – sometimes
while the baby is still alive.
4. Leather is not just a ‘by-product’ of the meat industry
Often people try to justify buying leather by saying it should be used so
as to reduce waste in the meat industry. This is wrong because leather is
not a freely given product of the meat industry. Meat and Livestock
Australia describe hides as ‘co-products’ of the meat industry, as profits
come from their sale.
The global leather goods market is valued at $95.4 billion USD, and is set
to reach $128.61 billion USD by 2022. Leather products are not sold to
reduce waste, they are sold for profit.
Slaughterhouses and the wider cattle industry alike have reported
multi-million dollar losses due to the decline in leather profits due to
more caring people choosing vegan alternatives.
Buying leather pays for the slaughter of animals.
5. Cows should not be killed for our vanity
While some leather is made from the skins of cows also exploited and
killed for beef and dairy, some cows are raised specifically for their skin,
to meet demand.
Luxury brands also want skins from animals that have no ‘marks’ – cuts,
barbed wire scars, tick or bug bites.
Don Oshman, publisher of Hidenet said ‘Many European luxury bag makers use
calf skins, and people aren’t eating much veal these days. ‘For this reason,
more calves are being raised specifically for their skin: ‘A calf is raised
in a pen and never goes outside, so it’s skin is blemish-free’.
6. Standard farming practices are painful
The cutting out of testicles, the crushing of the spermatic cord, the burning of horn buds in the head, the cutting out of horn buds, are all practices which can legally be done without any pain relief on cows below six months old in Victoria, Australia.
The supposedly ‘high animal welfare standards’ in Australia do not protect animals.
7. Cows are sexually exploited
Artificial insemination (AI) means forcing a fist into the anus of a cow
and inserting a rod with semen into her vagina. Most dairy cows are forcibly
impregnated in this way.
AI is done so as to breed cows with the semen of bulls with ‘superior
genetics’ who may be in different locations or who have already been
slaughtered. It also allows the insemination of more cows with the semen of
one ‘superior’ bull than would naturally be possible.
Bulls who have their semen taken from them by ‘electro-ejaculation’. This
exploitative method involves forcing a probe into the rectum of a bull which
stimulates him until he ejaculates.
8. There is no such thing as ‘ethically sourced leather’
There is no humane way to kill someone who doesn’t want to die.
All cows, no matter how they were raised, or what farming ‘practices’ they
suffered, have their lives taken from them.
9. Cruelty to cows, even in places they are supposed to be protected
Even in India, where cows are considered sacred by Hindi’s, and their
slaughter is illegal to different extents in all but a few states, there is
abhorrent cruelty to cattle.
Cows are forced on long journeys, often on foot, across the country to these
states were slaughter is legal. Cows who become exhausted and struggle to
continue are forced to. Ropes which are pierced through their noses are
tugged on, their tails are twisted and broken, they are beaten with sticks,
and have peppers forced into their eyes.
Once at a slaughterhouse, cows are killed in front of each other, their
throats slit while fully conscious, some even skinned alive.
India is the largest hide producer worldwide so it’s likely if you’re
wearing leather, it’s the skin of a cow who was killed in India.
10. You don’t know where your leather came from
There aren’t laws requiring the accurate labelling of leather – who or
where it came from. For example, Italy is Europe’s biggest producer of
finished leather but less than 10% of the raw or semi-finished hides used in
the industry come from Italian farms.
Italy is tied as only the 11th largest hide producer in the world, producing
3.6 million ‘pieces’ of skin a year. Most cow hides come from India, China
and Brazil, countries all producing over 40 million pieces annually.
There is no way of knowing where leather is really sourced from, and so no
way of knowing how that cow was treated or killed. Even if you did know
though, cows do not wants to die, no matter how.
11. Vulnerable people suffer for leather processing
The vast majority of leather is tanned with the use of extremely
hazardous chemicals such as Formaldehyde, Chromium and Arsenic. These
chemicals have all been found to be human carcinogens. These chemicals
combined have been linked to increased risks of lung, nasal, and sinus
cancer, leukaemia, severe dermatitis, liver abnormalities, skin lesions,
cardiovascular diseases and increased deaths in young adults.
When tanning leather, workers are exposed to these chemicals and their
health suffers. Due to heavy water pollution, communities surrounding
tanneries are put at risk, too.
In Bangladesh for example, where the tanning of leather is of great economic
value, 90% of tannery workers die before the age of 50.
12. You don’t know who your leather came from
Just as there are not labelling laws requiring the slaughter location,
there is also no way to know what animal leather came from.
While the large majority of leather comes from cows, it also can come from
slaughtered pigs, sheep, kangaroos, goats, deers, horses, countless other
animals, even including cats and dogs.
Leather from cats and dogs often comes from China, where a meat trade for
these animals exists. There are also very little animal cruelty laws in
China, the largest exporter of leather worldwide.
13. Leather is terrible for the environment
From Global Fashion Agenda’s 2017 ‘Pulse of the Fashion Industry’ Report
14. Even common synthetic leathers are better
Even common PU synthetic leathers, often considered to be unsustainable,
have been found to be far better for the environment than leather is.
These materials do not support animal agriculture, which is responsible for
more green house gas emissions than all forms of transportation worldwide.
These materials also, importantly, do not require the slaughter of an
innocent being.
15. Wearing someone’s skin is gross
Though the chemical processes that create it may allow us to forget it,
when we wear leather we are wearing someone else’s skin.
Skin that has been pulled off of someone’s body, that was bloody and fatty
and raw.
That’s pretty creepy.
16. There are plenty of death free, sustainable alternatives!
Even when ‘traditional’ PU synthetic leathers are more sustainable than leather, there are options that are much more sustainable and preferable for the planet:
17. You don’t need leather to look great
There are plenty of amazing vegan leather alternative bags, wallets,
shoes, jackets and garments to wear!
There is no need to wear someone’s skin.