Veganism is a lifestyle choice that’s all about protecting animals by avoiding the use of objects made from animals, animal by-products or using animal testing. Let’s just understand that Leather is “not”a by-product of the meat industry. Raising animals for food and leather requires huge amounts of feed, pasture land, water, and fossil fuels. Turning skin into leather requires massive amounts of energy and dangerous chemicals, including mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, and various oils, dyes, and finishes, many of them cyanide-based. Most leathers are chrome-tanned, a lot of which gets washed away into our fresh water supplies during the process of making leather. People who work in tanneries or live close by often suffer from cancer, lung damage caused by exposure to toxic chemicals used to process and dye the leather. “Non-leather” alternatives account for only a fraction of petroleum used in contrast to leather.
Leather not only causes suffering for the animals but also causes harm to our environment, the people that produce it and also those who choose to wear it.
