The animal industry wastes land and causes global warming
It pumps gas into the atmosphere & slurry into rivers
This is the environmental reason for boycotting the animal
industry, and for making this boycott more fashionable and more
likely to be copied around the world. More vegetarians fit on
the planet than meat eaters or leather-wearers, and as concern
grows about how we are all going to fit, with greenhouse gasses
and growing deserts caused by over-farming, environmental reasons
for going vegan become more common. When this web site was first
written, famine was in the news and there was a link to the Vegfam leaflet
that makes the case. Now that global warming is in the news
most weeks, One
of Animal Aid's Fact files covers it and the Vegan Society
has a 16 page colour download called "Eating
the Earth" Even the UK Government Central
Office of Information suggests buying less animal products.
The animal industry is cruel:
The rest of this page is much-adapted from an old information
sheet by the Vegan Society
- their
current pdf download is here. It gives examples of
cruelty and answers some of the common points people make about
why they wear leather. Reasons for boycotting each specific animal
product are listed by Peta.org
(http://www.peta.org/living/clothingguide-intro.asp),
while the Vegetarian
Society has a similar page about clothing.
by-product?
- biodegradable? exotic
leathers - pollution - excessive
calving - animal suffering
- lameness - mastitis
- transport - slaughter
- disease & money - synthetics available - fur
fashions - fur facts
Leather &
the 'By-Product' Myth
Vegetarians boycott the animal industry and vote with their wallets
to have less cruelty and waste in the world. Leather might make
half a slaughterhouse's profit and it's good to try and boycott
some of that half as well as the meat half. We do not have clear
figures for the amount of money that companies make from meat,
hydes and by-products because they do not need to tell their
shareholders. Money-in is money-in, whether it is from selling
a hide to a tanner or some flesh to a butcher. Typically, hydes
are bought from smaller Indian or Chinese tanneries by local
factories that make shoe uppers - even if the shoe itself is
made in the UK.
Exploding
the 'Bio-Degradable' Myth
Most of us are more emotionally attached to our leather shoes,
wallets, jackets, trousers & underpants than we are to the
plastic items like squeezy bottles and drink bottles that we
buy every day. This attachment makes us more careful in our purchases.
Words like "craft" and "natural" might go
through our heads without much thought, or perhaps with the thought
that a bio-degradable object is a nicer thing to buy occasionally
and own for a long time. But if our leather gear rotted as fast
as normal meat we would all be very smelly by the end of the
week.
The leather we buy in the shops has been chrome-tanned. a
highly polluting process designed to make leather last longer.
Archeologists in Northern Germany have found 12,000 old or leather
artifacts. Your nearest museum may have leather objects from
the Neolithic or Bronze ages
The
animal welfare myth
Animal welfare laws exist to some extent in the UK, but the shoes
you buy are no longer made here DMs moved their leather cutting
and sewing operations to Thailand in the 80s, with moulding and
sole-sewing going to China in 2005. DB shoes and Loake were forced
to move their upper manufacture to Madras. Clarks trainers are
made in Romania, with their last UK factory closing in 2007.
Many trainer designs are specifically designed to promote a fashion
for shoes with lot of fiddley sewing and assembly, so that European
manufacturers cannot compete. None of the countries - Vietnam,
Thailand, India - where shoe uppers are now made can afford to
make animal welfare a priority, even if their traditions, such
as Buddhism, do.
Even the laws that exist in the third world - for example
to protect endangered species - are easy to break. There is a
trade in hydes from zebras, bison, water buffaloes, boars, deer,
kangaroos, alligators, elephants, eels, sharks, dolphins, seals,
walruses, frogs, crocodiles, lizards & snakes. Thousands
of endangered olive Ridley sea turtles are captured and killed
illegally in Mexico, solely for their skins. It is estimated
that 25-30% of US imported crocodile shoe leather and other wildlife
items are made from endangered illegally poached animals. This
trade is a measure of how little people can enforce animal protection
laws of any kind in the countries where leather is made.
Leather pollutes
(see the Eating
the Earth pdf booklet)
The amount of waste and pollution generated by the leather manufacturing
industry is phenomenal. The stench from a tannery is overwhelming.
Not only do they pollute the air, however, they also pollute
the rest of the environment with the use of a multitude of harsh
toxic chemicals. One estimate puts the potential cost of an effluent
treatment plant in a tannery at 30% of the total outlay.
Substances used in the manufacture of leather include: lime,
sodium sulphate solution, emulsifiers, non-solvent de-greasing
agents, salt, formic acid, sulphuric acid, chromium sulphate
salts, lead, zinc, formaldehyde, fats, alcohol, sodium bicarbonate,
dyes, resin binders, waxes, coal tar derivatives and cyanide-based
finishes. Tannery effluent also contains large amounts of other
pollutants such as proteins, hair and salt.
The leather industry also uses a tremendous amount of energy.
In fact on the basis of quantity of energy consumed per unit
produced, the leather-manufacturing industry would be categorised
alongside the paper, steel, cement and petroleum manufacturing
industries as a gross consumer of energy.
Going back to the beginning of the chain of events that ends
up with a leather product, we find environmental problems already
very evident. Farms that breed animals are themselves an environmental
problem. Cattle belch and fart methane, which is produced during
fermentation in their guts. A typical animal emits 48 kg of methane
a year, with more bubbling out of its manure. Nearly half of
the European Union's methane comes from ruminant digestion and
manure.
Commercial dairy farming is not synonymous with environmentally
acceptable practice. Dairy farms are often specialist units with
high inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus - both as fertilisers
and purchased feeds. Stocking rates are high, there is often
no arable land on which to use slurry and dirty water, and many
units also grow maize which can cause high losses of nitrogen
and phosphorus through leaching, run-off and erosion.
Cows averaging 35 litres of milk a day can require up to 100
litres of drinking water a day. This requirement will increase
in hot conditions.
Beef farming makes other indirect contributions to the greenhouse
effect. For instance, fossil fuels are burnt to generate the
energy to produce fertiliser that feed the fodder crops on which
many animals feed. Rearing beef is also land-intensive with some
340,000 hectares of British farmland devoted to growing feed
for beef cattle, and beef cattle pastures take up more than a
million hectares. If some of this land was planted with trees
instead, these would soak up CO2 from the atmosphere as they
grow.
Excessive
calving
Like the diary industry, the tanning industry relies on shortening
the life cycle of animals. Just as a cow produces most milk when
it has plenty of young calves, so the value of the leather is
often higher when it is from a slaughtered young animal. There
is a logical link between avoiding veal (which many meat eaters
do out of sympathy for the young calves) and avoiding the smooth,
fine, unblemished animal skin that a calf produces. The leather
from older animals that you see living quietly in fields is more
likely to be scratched, parasite-marked for example by ringworm,
or contaminated by dung. Particularly if it comes from mature
males, it is likely to be harder and less stretchy.
Leather
= Animal Suffering
The animal farming industries produce the leather that manufacturing
industries use. Animals begin by being bred in intensive, semi-intensive
or extensive systems. In other words they may be factory farmed
as in the case of veal calves (veal crates are banned in this
country but calves are still raised for veal indoors in groups)
or animals such as sheep may be farmed extensively in hilly upland
areas where they are more or less left to their own devices suffering
extremes of weather, disease and a lack of adequate food. Even
the gentle dairy cows that are often admired casually grazing
the British countryside during the summer, are housed for 6 months
throughout the winter. Some dairy cows are housed all year round
Both cattle and sheep suffer from a variety of health problems
and undergo a variety of painful procedures depending on their
species and sex - castration, ear-tagging, tail-docking, artificial
insemination, and laparoscopy. However one thing they do have
in common is the pain of lameness and mastitis.
Lameness
Surveys of cases of lameness in dairy cows treated by veterinary
surgeons indicate an average annual incidence of about 4-6%.
When cases treated by the farmer are included the annual incidence
appears to be about 25%. Lameness is a major health and welfare
problem in all sheep producing countries. It is generally regarded
as the greatest cause of pain and discomfort in sheep. Farmers
Weekly writes in February 1997 that lame sheep were found in
92% of flocks covered by a Royal Veterinary College survey relating
to 758,252 ewes and 427,277 lambs.
Mastitis
Mastitis is a very painful bacterial infection of the udder of
the cow which causes inflammation and swelling. The udder becomes
hard and hot with an abnormal discharge. In the recently calved
cow the milk is thick, creamy and smells foul. The cow is often
lame in one or both hind legs with swollen joints. Body temperature
can be high and in some cases pregnant cows will abort or produce
a stunted calf. Around 4 out of ten cows are affected each year
in Britain.
Sheep suffer too. In really acute cases the ewe will have
a raised temperature and the udder may start to turn a very dark
colour as gangrene sets in. If this occurs, the whole or part
of the udder can eventually slough off. In extreme cases, the
ewe will rapidly die of septicaemia. Mild mastitis in sheep will
result in permanent damage to the udder, usually in the form
of abscesses, and ewes are often culled as a result. Treating
mastitis in ewes is rarely successful and a three-year survey
of over 30,000 lowland ewes found about 5% were affected. Subclinical
mastitis is almost impossible to detect but with up to 12% of
ewes affected at some stage in lactation.
Transport
Problems associated with transport include fear and pain associated
with handling and mixing animals; thermal and motion stress;
hunger, thirst and exhaustion; and risks of infection. In September
1996, 240 sheep were killed in a crash travelling from Britain
to Spain via France. The remaining 520 were killed in French
slaughterhouses.Two days later a further 300 sheep died in another
crash. Throughout the 90s, smaller slaughterhouses have tended
to close in the UK and animals have been taken on ever longer
journeys to the larger operators which supermarkets prefer to
buy from. Farmers are in a weak negotiating position when they
sell to supermarkets and have to transport their livestock wherever
they are asked. The best-known example is Tesco supermarket which
uses the St
Meryn slaughterhouse in Cornwall A quick
web search site
map will come-up with documents that show how common
this practice is, and how far those lorries which you see on
motorways are going.
Slaughter
Sheep are very vulnerable to stress during drawing out (selecting)
for slaughter, loading and transporting to the slaughterhouse.
In fact most of the stress on the day of slaughter is often associated
with handling, transport and time in the knacker's yard, or lairage.
These problems become more intense for animals that are unadapted
to handling. Sheep are usually slaughtered by electrical stunning
followed by throat cutting. Stunning, however, may not be very
effective and sheep might regain consciousness when they have
their throats slit or while blood is being drained from their
body.
The same with cattle; much distress suffered on the day of
slaughter is caused by transportation and lairage (holding animals
just before slaughter). Smaller animals like calves are usually
herded into open pens in groups and stunned electrically. Cows
and large animals are stunned with a blow to the head from a
piston in a compressed-air gun, known as a captive bolt. This
penetrates the skull and destroys part of the brain The government's
advisory body the Farm Animal
Welfare Council have been concerned at the inadequacy of
stunning. After stunning animals have their throats slit (stuck)
and are bled to death while hung upside down.
Many sheep and cattle are also ritually slaughtered ie. they
have their throats slit whilst fully conscious. If the meat can't
be sold as kosher, for example because the carcass is damaged,
it is sold on the open market without kosher labelling.
Disease
& money
The Food Standards
Agency combined foot hygiene parts of council trading standards
agencies after the foot-and-mouth outbreak of the 1990s. Meat
hygiene alone will cost the 60 million UK population £17,903,000
in 2002-3 and a separate tax on all food shops was considered
to pay for it, rather than a fairer tax on animal products. The
outbreak of mad cow disease which brought the agency into existence
also cleared the labour market out of vets. The animal farming
industry, which is both hard to manage and extremely competatitive,
has to grapple with the safety of issues of practices like putting
bits of animal carcass into animal feed or lifelong bulk antibiotic
injections to herds of cows. Anyone who watched the TV news during
the mad cow crisis or the salmonella eggs incident knows what
a strain the meat industry puts on public finances and public
health.
Buy Synthetic:
set the trend
The public buy millions of tonnes of plastic products each year
with very little thought .
More and more westerners are reducing their meat intake for vague
health and environmental reasons that aren't hard-edged.
Nobody buys shoes without a thought. There is a story of an MP
going through the lobby to vote on a bill. One of his colleagues
marched-over: "You're wearing suede shoes",
he said, as though he'd voted with the wrong party or left his
flies undone.
It's the same in offices and school playgrounds, as well as in
our own heads. We don't necessarily want to tell others about
ourselves, but we want to clarify our own identity to ourselves,
which hopefully others can take or leave. Westerners want to
look Eastern; easterners want to look Western; we want to look
different from our parents or true to our roots; upmarket or
cheeky, quietly sensible or in-yer-face. Even an un-seen brand
can make a difference. The very rich can buy specially made shoes,
which look like ordinary shoes but make them feel better and
may even be comfortable. The poor can buy over-priced trainers,
to show that they are not poor. There is not much room for all
this in the pages of a vegan shoe catalogue, showing shoes designed
for other markets or made in short production-runs. People scoff.
There's a website that describes vegan shoes as "the
lesbian orthopaedic look", but shoes set fashion more
firmly than other consumer choices and fashion sets the patterns
of consumption that cause over-farming, global warming and cruelty.
If you are a trend-setter, then one of the simplest ways you
can help the planet is by setting a trend to go vegan, and shoes
are a good way to do it. If you are a celebrity with millions
of teenage fans around the world who follow your every word,
buy some nice vegan shoes and mention them in interviews.
Fur fashions
Fur has gone out of fashion because of rational argument and
people setting trends. Top Shop has just put a "no
fur" sign in every shop window after stocking some dead
dogs that had possibly been skinned alive by mistake (the stocking
- not the skinning). Nowadays, the fur fashion statement is "I
am superficial at best". That is what fur says about
the wearer. Unfortunately, just that kind of person is often
drawn to the fashion industry as a way of making a living; deadbeat
designers are always looking for another exclusive niche market
or another taboo to break. Fortunately, real fashion that people
wear every day is set by the people around us and our own rational
choices, and most people have some idea about the facts of fur
production. The Coalition
to Abolish the Fur Trade has fact sheets about how to help
retailers avoid Topshop's mistake, while Respectforanimals
has a competition for young art students to design new T-shirts
each year.
Fur Facts
Around 30 million animals, mainly mink and fox - but also chinchilla,
sable and even lynx - are held captive in rows of metal wire
cages, where they are unable to pursue their natural instincts
and so resort to stereotyped behaviour, self-mutilation and cannibalism.
Death comes by gassing, electrocution, lethal injection or neck
breaking. There are around 12 such factory farms in Britain at
the time of writing (all mink), imprisoning 50,000 to 100,000
animals. Trapping accounts for an estimated 5 million animals
worldwide, normally by means of steel-jawed leg hold traps which
are now illegal in Britain. |