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By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D
A surprising amount of leather comes from India, a place where the cow is supposedly revered. International retailers routinely use skins from cows slaughtered in India, although retailers Nordstroms, Gap Inc. and its subsidiaries, Old Navy, and Banana Republic have agreed to stop selling products from India and China based on information supplied by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
Indian cow being forced into an overcrowded transport truck. Do you have its skin in your car? (Photo courtesy PETA/Karremann)
India's Council for Leather Exports agreed last year to address the problem, but it will take some time before they can effect major changes.
Leather is not the environmentally friendly product that the industry has suggested. The adverse environmental and health impacts of the leather industry are huge. Animal skin is turned into finished leather by the use of many dangerous mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, and cyanide based oils and dyes. These chemicals prevent the leather from being naturally biodegradable as the industry claims. Leather products can last thousands of years and the toxic chemicals with which they are infused leach into the environment during that time. Leather pieces found in Northern Germany were estimated to be 12,000 years old, dating from the Neolithic and European Bronze Ages!
People who have worked in and lived near tanneries have died of cancer from groundwater contaminated by the toxic chemicals used to process and dye the leather. A New York State Department of Health study found that more than half of all testicular cancer victims worked in tanneries.
Only a few days old when rescued by Farm Sanctuary, this calf and four others had been abandoned at a Northern California auction yard when they failed to sell for less than a dollar. (Photo courtesy Farm Sanctuary)
Huge amounts of fossil fuels are consumed in livestock and leather production, while plastic wearable items account for only a fraction of one percent of the petroleum used in the United States. The amount of energy consumed by the leather industry ranks among the paper, steel, cement and petroleum manufacturing industries.
Sports use huge amounts of leather. It takes 3,000 cows to supply the National Football League (NFL) with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs! It takes the leather of 3.8 steers to make the 72 footballs used in every NFL SuperBowl alone.
Non-leather sports equipment is readily available. Finding alternatives to leather is easy. I have non-leather shoes, hiking boots, belts, and bags that wear, look and feel like leather. I even have drums without skin heads. The links below will tell you how to find them.
Species that are hunted and killed specifically for their skins include: zebras, bison, water buffalos, boars, deer, kangaroos, elephants, eels, sharks, dolphins, seals, walruses, frogs, crocodiles, lizards, and snakes. Some of the leather from these animals that makes it to retail outlets is obtained illegally.
Here are some other horrific examples of imported leather goods:
Like those soft, kid leather gloves? Kid goats may be boiled alive to make them, and the skins of purposely aborted calves and lambs are considered especially luxurious.
Snakes and lizards are often skinned alive because of the widespread belief that live flaying imparts suppleness to the finished leather.
Like that exotic and expensive ostrich skin wallet? Farmers strip ostriches of their feathers before slaughtering them by pulling feathers from their sockets with pliers or shaving them off with electric shears. The "New York Times" reported that a slaughterer in California said it took him "two hours of violent struggle to kill a single ostrich."
Like that alligator skin handbag? PETA has observed workers in alligator factory farms smashing animals over the head with aluminum baseball bats and slicing through their spinal cords with steel chisels and hammers. Some alligators remained conscious and in agony for up to two hours.
It is so easy for us to break the chain of separation from nature that has allowed such cruelty to exist. All we have to do is stop buying leather.
We must decide that our identity is based on who we are, what we care about, what we want to be remembered for, and what we stand for, not how many creatures died to suit our needs.
It is time for the rationalizations to end - and along with them, the suffering.
RESOURCES
1. Finding alternatives to leather is easy. Visit the PETA website at: http://www.cowsarecool.com/alt.html
and find links to many sellers of non-leather products.
2. Learn more about the cruelties of factory farms from Farm Sanctuary at:
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/
and the Humane Farming Association at: http://www.hfa.org/.
3. Learn about the effects of the increased public awareness of India's cattle abuses at:
http://www.expressindia.com/fe/daily/
20000513/fco13040.html
4. See an ENS report of last year's efforts by PETA to get India to address the cruelty issue at:
http:
//ens-news.com/ens/jun2000/
2000L-06-01-03.html
5. Read about the Environmental Protection Agency's animal waste management activities at:
http://www.epa.gov/region09/cross_pr/
animalwaste/action.html.
6. Get help changing your diet and lifestyle from Earthsave at: http://www.earthsave.org/ and the Vegetarian Resource Group at:
http://www.vrg.org/.
7. Get more detail on these issues from other Healing Our World articles at:
http://www.ens-news.com/
ens/jun2000/2000L-06-23g.html and http://www.ens-news.com/ens/
sep2000/2000L-09-15g.html
{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle. He can be found wondering how he will explain all the cruelty in the world to his new son. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at
jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his web site at:
http://www.healingourworld.com} |
