About Leather
Most people don't condone cruelty to animals, and express that they love animals. Most people also don't want to
be involved with environmental damage to the planet earth. Yet all of the below continues to happen year after
year. It is human ignorance and mental disengagement to these atrocities, that allow them to continue to occur.
Leather is not natural or healthy.
Leather is not sustainable.
Leather is not humane.
Leather is not biodegradable.
Leather is not environmental safe.
Leather is not a by-product of animal slaughter.
Leather is not a product.
All life is conscious. All life is connected. When one being suffers, every being suffers.
The Leather Industry
Leather is not a by-product of the meat and dairy industry.
Animal skins turned into leather are a $1.5 billion dollar industry, which directly supports factory farming/slaughter
houses by accounting for 25% of their profits. The meat and dairy industry is not only heavily subsidized in the US by the government, but with meat consumption dropping since the 1970s, the profit from the sale of animal skins is essential to their business.
Over 2 billion dollars a year is spent convincing you otherwise.
The mainstream public has been brainwashed by carefully constructed marketing campaigns to perceive eating animals as natural, nutritious and healthy,the animals as happy and wearing their skin or fur as a status symbol of wealth, quality, sexiness, rebellious and luxury.
Meanwhile, the actuality of the abuses is kept well hidden from society’s view.
Do you know where any slaughterhouses or tanneries are? Probably not. These industries thrive on lies and profit from the suffering of sentient beings.
The Tanning Process
In the natural process of biodegrading the skin is the first element to rot or decompose,in order for that not to happen the skin must be treated with toxic chemicals.
There are 225 chemicals used in the tanning process many of which are mordents, also known for their association
with the funeral industry.
That “new leather smell” is actually a chemical reaction between the skin, formaldehyde and chromium salts.
Other toxic chemicals used are lead, cyanide, arsenic, azo dyes, aniline and chlorophenols to name a few.
These chemicals make the hide no longer organic matter, therefore it does not decompose. Historians have found preserved leather dating back to 5000 BC.
The skins go through many processes including soaking, fleshing, tanning, wringing, drying, kicking, cleaning, buffing, trimming and finishing.
Much of the processes are done in large tanning drums that create tons of waste run-off of the chemicals as well as pollutants protein, hair, salt, line, sludge, sulfides and acids. The industrial waste run-off from tanneries pollute the land, air and water supply.
In past years the leather industry developed a product called “vegetable tanned”, or eco-leather to have an eco-green product, claiming it is less harmful to the environment. There is no such thing as an environmentally friendly leather. The whole process is the same, the only thing different is the actual dye- which is used to color the skin, the vegetable dye does not have chromium in it. For this they replace it with a vegetable based dye/coloring. Vegetable tanning takes several weeks to finish and most tanneries will not do it. Even industry insiders admit vegetable tanning is just as damaging to the environment as tanning that uses chrome tint.
Tannery Workers
Workers at the tanneries suffer immensely. Exposure to all the chemicals makes the longevity of the work only a few years, with a high rate of developing cancer of the lung, stomach, bladder, skin, testicles, kidney, nasal passages, pancreas, as well as jaundice, musculoskeletal disorders and leukemia.
Most leather comes from the countries China and India, where worker and animal welfare laws are the most lax and many employees of the industry are children.
Environmental/Natural Resources
The livestock/leather industry is the largest contributor of environmental degradation worldwide.
It includes massive land deforestation, loss of top soil, and contamination of water supply, air pollution, overuse of oil and water, and loss of biodiversity. It produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes and ships in the world combined. It is more harmful to the environment than the textile, medicine, fertilizer and paper industries.
The industrial waste run off from tanneries pollute the land, air and water supply. Groundwater samples collected near tanneries have shown the presence of arsenic, chromium, lead, zinc and formaldehyde,which causes diseases in humans that live in surrounding areas such as gastro-intestinal disease, asthma, skin infections, lung disease, kidney disease, lung cancer,leukemia, growth abnormalities and poison in breast milk.
LAND: 1.5 billion acres of land are cleared a year in the US alone to raise the livestock.
GRAIN: The grain, soybeans and corn that are fed to livestock in the US alone could feed 800 million people.
WATER: It takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of ground beef, while growing 1 pound of wheat requires only 25 gallons. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year.
WASTE: Leather tanning generate 800,000 tons of chrome shavings annually, which ends up in landfills.
Treatment of Animals
The animals raised for food and stripped for their hide, are seen as economic units, not the sentient beings they are and they suffer cruel abuse their entire life.They are, as all life is, conscious and experience the same feelings as humans, although they speak in a different language.Animals have the same instinct as humans, to fight for their lives.
They are here for their own purposes and as companions and are largely misunderstood by humans. Animals are not here to serve humans.They are aware of whats happening and they do experience pain. Everything is connected, every being, to every other being, as one suffers, every being suffers.
Animals are forcefully bred in overcrowded hideously filthy, disease ridden, factory farms where they live in confinement and are subject to beatings, electric shock, forcibly impregnated, endure painful mutilations without pain relief such as castration, branding, de-horning, tails being cut off or broken, teeth removed, testicles ripped out, and harmful hormone and antibiotic injections.
They suffer not only these physical abuses but mental as well. They are taken away from their mothers at birth and develop neurotic behaviors due to confinement and torture.
When they are transported to the slaughterhouse, they are treated as cargo, being prodded or dragged as many are deformed and crippled from abuse, neglect and confinement into grossly overcrowded trucks where they are exposed to all weather extremes on their way to the slaughterhouse. Many die of heat exhaustion in the summer, or arrive frozen to death in the winter.
At the slaughter house animals are hung upside down with shackles around their ankles. Their throats are slit tobleed them and they are cut down the center of the belly to be skinned and dismembered while they are still conscious after improper stunning. Pigs are dropped into scalding hot water to have their hair removed.
The goal of skinning animals to use their fur, from such animals as chinchillas, minks, foxes is to remove it from the body without damaging the fur. The methods are some of the most gruesome which include oral, anal, vaginal electrocution, bludgeoning their skulls, strangling with wire, bled to death, suffocating, and peeling off the skin while the animal is still conscious. In countries such as China, dogs and cats are used, are often stolen, kept in basements to suffer the same treatment. It takes 24 cats to make 1 fur coat.
In addition tons of excrement, blood and offal waste pollute the land, water and air surrounding factory farms and slaughterhouses.
10 billion animals are slaughtered a year. There is no such thing as humane slaughter ever.