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."

ExConstance I've always thought it must be far harder to be vegan if you have to also account for gluten-free needs (or if you have a nut or soy allergy for that matter). We're lucky in our house as no-one has any food requirements (I.e. actual needs rather than preferences). I'm vegan but the others aren't and they easily work around me - we have the 'last vegan point' of any meal for example, where my portion is removed and the others add milk, cheese and bacon (see yesterday's dinners)!

My Toyota yaris has cloth seats.

I wasn't taking the piss when I said that I couldn't give up meat products due to the gelatin in my drugs.

I went veggie for 4 months and was really proud that I managed meat free for that long. Then I read the back of my drugs pack, felt very deflated and went back to eating fish. Slippery slope to chicken and the rest was history.

Apologies if I have missed this somewhere on the thread, but can anyone tell me whether there is any practical (as opposed to financial) reason why the same cows can't be used for leather, meat and dairy?

Presumably they must have been once upon a time, (and the bones them boiled for glue)? Is it a matter of yields and efficiency?

This is an interesting article:

www.ers.usda.gov/media/147867/ldpm20901.pdf

MartinaJ very interesting indeed - thank you for linking!

Some companies make a point of using leather that IS a byproduct of the meat etc. industry. Not many, but it is possible to find some.

Gusti Leather, for example, have a good track record, especially their natur range that is from free range goats raised for meat in India, vegetable dyed without chrome, and produced by paying a fair wage to their workers without child labour.

Or Vellies from South Africa are shoes produced from kudu, a wild antelope that is subject to government culling due to overpopulation. The leather is taken from animals that are culled and would otherwise be incinerated, vegetable dyed, and made by hand by fairly-paid skilled local craftspeople.

IMHO, products such as these are more ethical than high street pleather that is produced in sweatshop conditions with petrochemical materials. They are also arguably more ethical than cotton cloth products grown with hundreds of litres of pesticides that will wear out after only a year or two of use.

Leather is not a black and white issue. If someone's ethical stance is to avoid all animal products, then that's fine - it makes the decision easier, actually. But if someone is trying to choose the most ethical option from a range of choices that include leather, then sometimes the leather product may actually come out on top.

Hi OP.

I'm a meat eater and as long as the animal is for food I think it's fine to wear leather.

Animal fur is different animals were not eaten just hunted for coats. That I think is awful

You are a vegan your choice . I am a meat eater my choice.

Interesting thread. I do hope everyone stops questioning everything you consume as its a bit irrelevant

There are definitely degrees of veganism.

I'm vegan because I got sick of having to scrutinise every food label to try and work out whether the animals had been treated terribly or merely not that well. It rankled that 'British pork' could mean 'the pigs were in the UK for 7 days before slaughter', for instance. The subterfuge and deliberate mis-selling got to me in the end and so I decided to just not eat mass-produced meat/dairy/eggs at all.

I encourage DH a rabid carnivore to seek out reputable butchers and to buy from farm shops or local small-scale places, where they seem to have better welfare standards and to view the animals a bit less like regrettably animated living boxes of meat and more like other living creatures which get scared and have pain receptors. I think it's a good middle ground, since I have rarely met any meat-eaters who go 'I LIKE HURTING ANIMALS, BWAH HA HA HA' - nearly everyone I know who eats meat tries to maximise welfare. I'll eat honey from very small-scale producers (i.e. in their garden) and eggs that come from pet hens; since my quibbles are over welfare, those conditions are satisfied in a home environment.

OTOH, there are a lot of vegans who think that we should not take advantage of animals at all. To them it doesn't matter whether the animal is well looked after or not prior to death; the point is that it dies, and this is unacceptable. Now they may be right from a logical point of view, but I'm pretty sure that if asked for its opinion the cow would prefer the cushier, less-stressed option. Therefore, that's the one I support.

There is a world of vegan opinion out there and I think I lean more towards the 'plant-based diet/lifestyle' side tbh. Still, I'm happy with that.

Yes you are being unreasonable. Veganism is almost like a religion the way people seek to convert everyone.

"Do you really have no compassion for the - needless! - suffering of animals? I'm not debating the right to kill animals, I am talking about horrific, unnecessary torture"

Sure, suffering is a bad thing but I don't see why I need to stop wearing leather shoes because animals are mistreated somewhere in Bengladesh.

Murphyslaw
As has been said over and over.
Leather is not a byproduct of the meat industry.
So it is exactly the same as fur.

Itsbetter

Cows equals leather every website you look up say cows equals leather

Course it's a byproduct

If however you are saying slaughter houses are not passing it on then that is a different issue

Geek - You don't have to search in South Africa to find leather from animals who are also eaten. Turkey is one of the largest producers of leather in the world and I can't imagine a single bit going to waste there. When living there, I saw people eat brain, tongue, intestines, stomach (tripe), kidneys, liver, feet (in soup), and even the face of the animal. I haven't seen tail eaten but that's about it.

"Leather is not a byproduct of the meat industry"

What do you think happens to the skin of an animal when it is killed for its meat?

Murphys
Did you honestly not understand what that meant? I doubt it.
Yes leather is made from cows.
The leather used and worn is not from the wake animals used for food.
Therefore the leather you use isn't a byproduct. Making it the same as fur.

YABU, I eat meat, therefore I wear leather.

You know that these high end, designer Italian leather goods are often made by chinese children in mafia run sweatshops in Naples though...?!

"About calcium - where do you think cows get it from? From eating grass and other veg."

Sorry to break this to you but, um, humans are not cows. Cows are herbivores with radically different digestive systems to humans and digest plants more efficiently than we do.

If you are not eating any animal products, you must take Vitamin B12 supplements at the very least.

I think its OK to eat meat and animal products and use animal products such as leather as long as the animals have happy lives. Otherwise they would not exist and I suspect many wild animals often have slow miserable deaths (just like humans) so a quick trip to the abbatoir would be a lot more merciful

However my bank balance won't allow me to always buy organic foods unfortunately.

I think palm oil is a real issue because of the threat to rain forests. I was looking for suet at christmas time and there was none available without palm oil in our local supermarket

I would happily sign a petition for better conditions for leather workers or look for labels about this when buying leather

"The leather used and worn is not from the wake animals used for food"

Of course it is.

Maybe not in a few places you have Googled like India where they don't eat cows but that is not the norm.

Why would they throw away the meat of the animal when they want its skin for leather?

It's better therefore you missed my point the issue is with the slaughter houses. As its a byproduct

by-product
noun
noun: byproduct
1. an incidental or secondary product made in the manufacture or synthesis of something else.

I do eat meat/wear leather, buy the best I can get. Quite happy to hear your points but..

..chimpanzees do eat meat. I remember seeing a nature programme showing a pack hunting a smaller primate through the tree tops. Admittedly not alot, but they do eat it when they can get their hands on it!

I think it might be easier to argue that meat can be a byproduct of the leather industry, given (AFAIK in the rare cases where the same animal is used for meat and leather) the hide is worth more money than the meat.

Murphy.
If you insist of being pendantic.
The byproduct of most beef production is cow skin. It isn't leather. Cow skin that isn't treated isn't leather.

I've clearly missed something.
What's cow skin not being leather yet got anything to do with it??