Getting under a thick skin of deceit… an in-depth look at the truth about leather
LIFESTYLE
An unethical ‘material’ that harms not only the animals we skin for it, but the planet, too. by Emma Håkansson / @hakamme of Willow Creative Co If you haven’t been lucky enough to meet a cow, (or any animal we use and abuse in the animal agricultural and fashion industries) who lives at a sanctuary and knows they are safe, and so lives free of a fear of humans, let me tell you a little about what it’s like. To start with, cows have just as much personality as the companion animals we live with. Some of them are very curious, love to play, love to socialize with their friends. Others are more reserved, like their space, and love affection - once you’ve earned their tick of approval and been accepted as a friend. They wag their tails like dogs, they have best friends and they have cows they don’t get along with. Essentially, I’m explaining their ability to not only feel physical pain (through their complex central nervous system), but to live a life not unlike the lives of animals we love. All animals want to live, and love to live. It is immoral to kill someone who wants to live. This is a premise we take for granted when thinking of other humans, or our beloved companion animals, but we’ve been culturally conditioned to think that the lives of some animals aren’t important. We’ve been taught to see some living beings simply as ‘stock’, that happen to be alive, but only exist for our use and consumption. But why do we feel that some sentient animals (including ourselves) deserve to live more than others? While we can talk about intellect, about supposed ‘superiority’, all animals are the same in the one way that really matters – we all want to live. There are many animals we kill solely so we can wear them; foxes, alligators, minks, snakes. All these needless killings are wrong, but let’s talk about cows for now. It’s a common belief that the leather industry itself does not kill cows for their skin, but that the skin of cows killed so we can eat their flesh, is turned into leather, simply to ‘minimize waste’. It follows, that people think leather should be bought and sold so long as the meat industry exists, so that we don’t waste anything. In reality, leather is not a by-product of the meat industry, but a co-product – a product that accounts for about 50% of a farmer’s financial gain from the killing of an animal. By supporting the leather industry, you support the meat industry, and the killing of animals. Not only are cows whose fleshes are eaten used for their skin, but so too are the bobby calves of the dairy industry.A bobby calf is a male baby cow, who was born from a dairy cow, as, like
all other animals, cows need to be pregnant to produce milk. This baby boy won’t grow up to produce milk himself, so the most financially viable ‘solution’ to his existence in the dairy industry, is to kill him. Sometimes his skin is then sold for soft, ‘luxurious’ leather products. It gets more barbaric too. There are some cows who are sent to slaughter in the late stages of pregnancy, who are killed, and have their (almost completely developed) calf ripped from her to be used for ‘slink leather’, the most expensive and soft leather available. This is no way to treat beings with complex social systems, with strong maternal bonds, with clear and undeniable sentience and love for life. Needless violence and death aside, leather is still a very harmful ‘material’.The knowledge that the meat industry is detrimental to the environment is becoming more and more wide spread, but the link between this industry and leather is often forgotten. For example, a pound
of cow flesh (‘beef’) requires 2000 gallons of water to produce (think of how much water a cow drinks, how much water is used to irrigate feed crops, for sanitation purposes, for all kinds of processes). Leather comes from the same animal, so of course this mammoth water usage applies (roughly) to it, too. According to the UN, animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions – more than all transport worldwide. Think of all that car exhaust, jet fuel and petrol. This is another statistic we must remind ourselves applies to leather, and not just ‘food’ based animal agriculture. One of the most unsustainable parts of raising animals for ‘products’ is land usage. According to WWL, 25% of global land use, land-use change and forestry emissions Trend Privé Magazine 47
