I’ve always loved clothes, especially shoes & handbags!
My favourite shoes had always been Christian Louboutin & my favourite handbags from Louis Vuitton, Chanel & Gucci.
Since going vegan 15 years ago I started to look more into how leather & wool is produced.
My whole initial reason for going vegan in the first place was because of the cruelty involved in the diary industry. Once I found out about such cruelty I immediately cut out milk, cheese, chocolate.
I quickly gave up eggs thereafter.
Was the leather & wool industry cruel too or was leather a by-product & the wool merely sheared off the sheep’s back?
Many believe that leather comes from cattle and calves as by-product of the hideous and well-documented abuses in the meat industry
Every year, the global leather industry slaughters more than a billion animals and tans their hides.
Leather can be made from cows, pigs, goats, and sheep; exotic animals such as alligators, ostriches, and kangaroos; and even dogs and cats, who are slaughtered for their meat and skin in China, who in turn export their skins around the world. Because leather is normally not labeled, you never really know where (or whom) it came from.
Most leather comes from developing countries such as India and China, where animal welfare laws are either non-existent or not enforced. In India, a PETA investigation found that workers break cows’ tails and rub chili peppers and tobacco into their eyes in order to force them to get up and walk after they collapse from exhaustion on the way to the slaughterhouse.
In the U.S. many of the millions of cows and other animals who are killed for their skin endure the horrors of factory farming—extreme crowding and deprivation as well as castration, branding, and tail-docking—all without any painkillers. At slaughterhouses, animals routinely have their throats cut and some are even skinned and dismembered while they are still conscious.
Buying leather directly contributes to factory farms and slaughterhouses because skin is the most economically important coproduct of the meat industry.
Leather is also no friend of the environment, as it shares responsibility for all the environmental destruction caused by the meat industry as well as the pollution caused by the chemicals and associated toxins used in tanning.
With every pair of leather shoes that you buy, you sentence an animal to a lifetime of suffering.
So what can you do?
Instead, you can choose from hundreds of styles of non-leather shoes, clothing, belts, bags, and wallets.
My favourite cruelty free handbag & shoes right now are from De- Vesi & Beyond Skin but there are so many amazing Cruelty free brands out there now.
Check out PETA’s cruelty-free clothing guide for great tips on where to find fashionable yet compassionate clothing.
(Information sourced from PETA)
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