To ask that people consider giving up leather?

[Breadandwine]

I’ve been a vegan for 13 years. My concerns are animal welfare and global warming, plus I feel it's good for my health.

With regard to animal welfare, I have issues with every aspect of animal husbandry - but I have to be honest, until now, I haven’t given much thought to leather. I avoid it, certainly - it took several years of delicate negotiations before I persuaded my wife to accept a faux leather suite instead of the leather one she wanted - but I’ve always thought leather to be a by-product of the dairy industry.

Not so. An article by Lucy Siegle in this morning’s Observer Magazine brought me up short.

Leather production seems to be worse than other forms of animal cruelty in that humans are suffering too:

"Finally the animals are skinned (in front of each other) in the back streets of Dhaka. The skins are processed in makeshift tanneries with workers, including children, knee deep in toxic chemicals."

Re: vegan wine - finings are added to clarify the wine and these are protein based, so often of animal or fish origin:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finings

Hope. I like eating meat and wearing leather. I would never consider giving up either.

Go back to tumblr OP. You may have more success, for a week anyway.

Have we arrived already at the part where personal attacks start?

Reveal more and more about myself? Not as much you have in your half-naked photo, I hope

Thanks Natsku. Every day is a school day on MN.

Deprivation from meat, eggs, and cheese sounds crazy enough but no wine? Surely that is too much to ask, OP.

ljkkl the cows are bred for leather ....so they wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the leather trade.

I honestly think that if you are fussy about wearing leather then you should be a vegan like the OP. IMO people who cry about others wearing leather and fur, then are happy to eat a beef burger, are hypocrites. An animal is dying, wether it's for fashion or gluttony - and one is no more noble a cause than the other. It's not like an animal would say "you want to kill me? Well no way if it's for a pair of shoes, but if you intend to eat me, go for it"

Agree with many previous posters - there are so many (often inescapable) ways of harming the environment and other people/animals who share this planet, and plastic (often the only alternative available to leather) is hardly great.

So much eye roll for all those desperate to 'catch out' a vegan, though. OP wasn't proselytising particularly. OP didn't come along and say YOU MUST STOP BUYING LEATHER YOU AWFUL PEOPLE. Does it make people feel more comfortable to say "yeah but you had kids / would you use non-vegan medicine / what about air miles" blah blah?

Activities to minimise harm are not somehow voided because you eat avocados from halfway round the world.

I am not perfect. I am not even vegan. ;) But I eat less dairy produce than I would prefer, for ethical (also health) reasons, because eating a little dairy is surely less damaging than eating loads. I walk a lot, I need comfortable and durable shoes so I buy leather because it lasts. (I then get them re-soled because I vaguely imagine this must be less harmful than chucking them and buying a whole new pair every time.) I wouldn't buy a leather sofa because I don't like them and I can't afford one, so I can hardly make a virtue out of necessity and preference on that score.

Surely basic ethical living is going without a little, where you can? Less meat, less dairy, less travel, fewer processed goods, less consumption generally, fewer children. Different sacrifices are easier and harder for different people. Nobody is trying to win a bloody prize.

"basic ethical living is going without a little, where you can? Less meat, less dairy, less travel, fewer processed goods, less consumption generally, fewer children."

Ethical living is great, but I'm getting feeling that you live by different ethical principles than most people I know, who would not consider the question of whether to have another DC as an unethical one.

DD is in puberty and her paediatrician told us that girls/women store most of the calcium in their bones during the two years of puberty, so she should eat as much dairy and especially yoghurt & cheese as she can in this period. Would you like me to NOT give her much dairy because you feel it is unethical?

< waits for "Paediatrician doesn't know anything! Dairy leeches calcium from bones 'coz vegan website told me so!" >

"because eating a little dairy is surely less damaging than eating loads"

Only if you buy into the claim that it is harmful. I am not convinced.

Sure, if you are lactose intolerant or allergic to cow milk proteins, then you are in trouble with dairy. But I'm not.

I like you NellWilsonsWhiteHair every little helps! Also, I agree with your ethical viewpoint.

People who say 'Well if you can't do it PROPERLY then what's the point?' do get on my tits though. Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, IMO.

I wish i could be vegan op i think its very hard to though, I admire people who are.
I dont really buy leather anyway, hate leather sofas they are cold.

ljjkl and sorry not having a go but you mentioned employment for people in Bangladesh ...but in the leather factories they use child labour and they all paddle about in toxic chemicals used to preserve the leather - these chemicals are known carcinogens. Which then are released in their environment, contaminate their water supplies. If we went for quality rather than quantity and paid more they could still have jobs but we could invest in the welfare of the animals and the workers. The reason leather is cheap from China and India is because the conditions and welfare standards wouldn't be allowed in the EU/West.

Sorry haven't read the thread so this may have been mentioned. What particularly got me about the 6 page article in the magazine was the leather jacket advertised in the fashion section 2 pages later

cote
You do know that calcium isn't only found in dairy products, right? ;)

OP, YANBU. If bringing it up leads to just one person educating themselves about where these products actually come from, then yay. I've just recently gone vegan after finally looking into the production processes, and I really regret not making the effort sooner.

And I completely agree with Nellwilsonswhitehair it is all about being aware of the issues and doing what you can.

A relatively unbiased short article on calcium in cow milk/soy milk here

I didn't know this about tricalcium phosphate.

Bloody vegans. Can't keep all that self-righteousness to themselves.

And here's another one about nutritional needs. Might be interesting to both vegans and people who want to accurately bash their lifestyle choices

Linky

If you don't wear leather shoes you are going to wear plastic/man made fibre ones.

Have you seen what the petrochemical and oil industry does and what sort of regimes produce oil around the world?

Unless you weave your own shoes from your own hair or wear clogs hand hewn from fallen deadwood, there really is no truly ethical choice

I love my leather shoes, boots, bags and purses. No thank

*no thanks

I don't wear leather and haven't had a problem buying shoes on the high street - I admit that I've had my share of pleather knee boots/court shoes for work (though at least half of those were at a time in my life when I'd have been picking the £30 boots over the £90 ones from necessity anyway), but have also bought perfectly nice and fashionable textile shoes of the converse/vans type, hunter "wellies" that are wearable as indoor footwear too, etc. Even DMs come in a vegan version nowadays.

I like "horrible histories" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanning
Interesting to learn what common day items were originally used in the process

Recently, I watched a TV programme where a company was investigating swapping free range pigs/pork production for another source of protein. The new food was supposed to be more "ethical" and be able to feed thousands of extra people and much cheaper than current food production methods.
The new food was swarms of flies or some sort of insects, possibly freeze dried.
SO BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR !

Similarly, people who farm in the Lake District stated that the landscape would look very different if farms and animals did not exist. I expect that this holds true for many other landscapes

Similarly there is an island that 1000s of flip flops wash up on the beach, so many that an industry has developed to recycle them into other useful things

Car sticker no cows, no fields

I am sure people have other examples

We all make choices

None of us are perfect

I never give Vegans a higher standing than any other person (why would I ?)

I do some positive things to try to help the environment

Above all the animals are innocent

I will not be giving up leather

Thanks for the replies on vegan wine. Learn something new everyday.