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Meanwhile it appears that leather is piling up unused: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-09/america-s-obsession-with-beef-is-killing-the-leather-

• jszymborski 7y ago
  It's a difficult calculus... On one hand, the hope is that you're making the margins slimmer on animal products. On the other hand, as you mentioned, you're buying new (often petroleum-based) materials versus (arguably more renewable) repurposed material.
  • wUabkSG6L5Bfa5 7y ago
    This. Part of the benefit is that it raises the cost of producing meat. Mass animal cruelty will be ended mostly by economics.
    • whenchamenia 7y ago
      Farming is not animal cruelty.
      • diablerouge 7y ago
        No one is talking about farming. We're talking about factory meat production and slaughterhouses.
• kibwen 7y ago
  But this is an expected consequence of any attempt to reduce demand for farmed cattle. It isn't feasible for consumers to reduce demand for all cattle products in perfect lockstep. Consider an alternative scenario: demand for beef falls, but demand for leather doesn't. In that case the price of beef would plummet, and stock would pile up and eventually spoil, but the supply of cows continues unabated because of the existing leather demand. In both the real and hypothetical cases, the reduced demand for one material should result in an increased price for the other material, since the price of producing a cow is independent of the sale price of its byproducts. This would eventually reduce demand of the popular product (to a degree depending on how elastic its demand is), which eventually reduces supply of cattle all on its own, which--in the case of people who already avoid meat but are now additionally avoiding leather, thanks to popularized alternatives--was the original intended objective. [Disclaimer: I eat meat and am wearing leather right this very moment, but I've been slowly reducing my demand for each for a few years now.]
  • cortesoft 7y ago
    I mean, it depends on ratio of usage.... this is kinda like optimizations in programming. It might be the case that as you optimize one thing, a new thing becomes the bottleneck... but it also might be the case that the one, current, bottleneck is such an outlier that it is STILL the bottleneck, no matter how much you optimize. It could be the case that leather usage is such a small fraction compared to beef that even if you reduce beef consumption 90%, you still have excess cow hides. I don't know the actual numbers, but your scenario won't always be the case is my point.
    • kibwen 7y ago
      Indeed, if there's a name for Amdahl's Law but generalized to bottlenecks in general then it would be in play here. Having real numbers would allow us to better understand the potential benefits (or lack thereof), although I think in this case it's profit that we specifically want to measure, rather than usage or popularity (since, after all, as long as profit is non-negative then it shouldn't result in unsellable/wasted product).
  • 7y ago
• o09rdk 7y ago
  I agree with the article's suggestion that education of consumers is probably part of the solution, but reform of the industry is probably also necessary. It may also be there's going to be an inevitable decline if people move away from meat and animal products in general. I've generally moved gradually more and more toward a vegan and vegetarian lifestyle, not with some single big decision, but through unanticipated shifts in my decisions over time. Shoes and boots are one area where I still regularly buy leather though, even though I've tried not to. I've had a lot of trouble finding shoes and boots that have the same durability, design, and breathability of leather. Not saying leather alternatives aren't out there, just that for many things the choice isn't the same. I still eat dairy products, and many of the arguments in that article have always been on the back of my mind -- if I eat animal products, isn't it best to make full use of the animal? But for me the leather industry's problems aren't all about animal welfare, it's about the environmental effects and working conditions. It's hard to spend years reading about poor environmental and labor practices in the leather industry and feel ok about buying leather. In the end, I've ended up purchasing leather that's traceable in some way, preferably vegetable tanned, or if not, produced somewhere I trust. Maybe this is all naive but all one can do is try their best to make decisions they feel comfortable with, one at a time. If the leather industry wants people to buy leather again they have to convince people of the reasons for doing so, and I suspect increasingly that will have to include environmental, social, and animal welfare reasons as well. I'm not saying that those reasons aren't there, just that they have to make the case, or someone does.
• cies 7y ago
  Vegans are in there primarily for the ethics (climate or health reasons usually are secondary). In one way veganism is a boycott, not to pay for products that clearly require animal to be harmed. That leather piles up shows it's becoming less in demand, thus less valuable, thus animal farming becomes less profitable. Vegans rejoice.
  • reaperducer 7y ago
    Isn't "vegan leather" just plastic? Doesn't pumping all that oil, a non-renewable resource, negate the ethics of not killing a cow, which is a renewable resoure? Or is this one of those cases where people latch onto one side of an issue, and can't see the other?
    • superpermutat0r 7y ago
      It can be from plant oil. Vegans also do not see cows as resource so the decision for them is clear as there is no negation and weighing.
    • taffer 7y ago
      The thing is that producing the same amount of leather releases orders of magnitude more toxic chemicals into the environment than producing the same amount of plastics.
    • shhshahassa 7y ago
      They're not a resource. They are a living creature.
    • tlb 7y ago
      It's only a few hundred grams of plastic from a slightly larger amount of oil. An amount of oil that might move your car a few miles, or heat your house for an hour. A pair of boots lasts years, so it's not the first place to cut back.
    • neuralRiot 7y ago
      There's also garments and products made with natural fibers like cotton, linen, hemp.
• firethief 7y ago
  There appears to be some confusion here. Cattle are not normally clad in leather. Leather is a product that can be made from their hides. This process is economically performed in ways that release heavy metals and sundry other unpleasantries into the environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanning_(leather)#Health_and_environmental_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanning_(leather)#Health_and_e...
  • Ma8ee 7y ago
    Of course. But to some degree that environmental impact can be reduced by using vegetable tanning. And a good pair of leather shoes will last a decade with good care. And the alternative is usually some kind of synthetic material made from petroleum.
    • taffer 7y ago
      > But to some degree that environmental impact can be reduced by using vegetable tanning. Is that so? From what I remember, vegetable tanning is just as toxic as chrome tanning. Just because something is "more natural" it is not necessarily better.
      • cycrutchfield 7y ago
        I don't think so. From what I've read, veg tanning does not have anywhere near the same environmental impact as chrome tanning.
        • taffer 7y ago
          I found this: > No significant differences were found in the footprint of vegetable and chromium leather processes https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jiec.12504 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jiec.12504
      • Ma8ee 7y ago
        No, it is not as toxic as chrome tanning. It's not that it hasn't any environmental impact, but that is the case with so called vegan shoes too.
• Animats 7y ago
  Leather, as a secondary product, is subject to big price swings, depending on whether there's more demand for leather than meat.
• deleted 7y ago
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• novok 7y ago
  How much cheaper are leather goods now then? They seem as expensive as ever.