7 ms·

Practically speaking, I'd be more upset if we continued to kill animals and just threw their skin out rather than using it. If you're going to kill something, y

by donatj 2y ago

Practically speaking, I'd be more upset if we continued to kill animals and just threw their skin out rather than using it. If you're going to kill something, you really should to the best of your ability use every part of that animal. That's both reasonable and moral. As far as I am aware, the leather industry doesn't really drive the farming of animals but instead exists purely as a secondary byproduct processing market.

Arn_Thor 2y ago
Not “purely” as a byproduct. They are complementary industries. Without the leather trade, meat producers would have to pay to properly dispose of that byproduct. I agree that would be wasteful, and I love quality leather products myself. But I recognize that the leather, meat and dairy lobbies all work towards the same goal of ever expanding the industry. So I am always on the lookout for great vegan leather. If the demand market dries up, this will raise the cost of meat and dairy, which will give alternatives to those a better chance to thrive.
- donatj 2y ago
  I think you are mistaken. If meat industry disappeared, I don't believe the leather industry would exist on any sort of comparable scale. People would not be raising cows and devoting fields to feed and the whole chain of events that goes into slaughting and animal for it's skin. Leather would be profoundly expensive. The meat industry on the other hand would be largely unaffected if the leather industry disappeared. They just need to find something else to do with the skin, and they would over night.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    > They just need to find something else to do with the skin, and they would over night. Not even. The skin would go into the same grinders as all of the "useless" parts of the animal and become whatever downstream products it becomes (dog food, protein additives for animal feed, etc)
    - tbossanova 2y ago
      Presumably they would earn less money for this than for leather, hence making it less profitable if only marginally.
  - Arn_Thor 2y ago
    To say they're complementary doesn't mean that they depend on each other to an equal degree. I don't believe it would be easy to find a use for all that cow skin. Think of the enormous amounts. But even if they did find a use for it that doesn't cost them, it's not likely to be nearly as profitable as selling it as an input to the leather industry. (If there was a more profitable way to use cow skin we'd probably be doing that by now)
weinzierl 2y ago
I toured the BMW works several times and I remember that they stressed that they can only use raw hide from special farms because most on the market has too many blemishes for example from barbed wire.
Voultapher 2y ago
As others have noted, it's not a pure byproduct and if you believe that the way we treat cattle is immoral, singling out one industrial scale consumer of animal products in a web of interconnected and interdependent industries and saying changing them won't change the bigger picture is in isolation correct. But it misses the bigger picture, if you believe for ideological reasons, that there is no moral way to use animals at industrial scale - the same way that thinking of slavery as something negative is a subjective ideological stance, one that wasn't the mainstream opinion of many societies over time - dismantling the leather industry won't get you all the way there, but it's a step. To take a personal stance, I draw the arbitrary line at insects, I'm fine with farming plants and insects in some kind of harmony with nature, but not mammals or fish. Live on earth is a co-op, you don't win by being the last species standing.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Gazelles cooperate with leopards, you say?
  - Voultapher 2y ago
    That's an old trope. I'm not talking about the individual level. But even in your example, if the Leopards hunt Gazelles and other Prey animals to extinction, there won't be any Leopards, inversely hunters play a crucial role in keeping populations of animals in a sustainable equilibrium. It's possible to read your comment as the old trope of, if other animals kill to live why can't we? Well I'd be surprised if you'd argue that one person killing another over a personal grievance is the same thing as committing genocide on purpose. Yes both involve the killing of humans, but there are some substantial qualitative differences. I purposefully talk about industrial scale animal use. It's something completely different for indigenous people to hunt and use animals. The latter I have no moral objections too.
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Quibbles: leopards don't deliberately refrain from hunting their prey to extinction, humans do deliberately refrain from eating the entire population of cows and pigs and sheep, and leopards aren't motivated a personal grievance against gazelles. (Man, that gazelle is such an ass! I'm gonna eat him.) Then there's the ethics bit, which goes like: * We should not say animals are "only animals" and use that as a reason to eat them, that would be unethical, * Furthermore, we should not hold them to the same ethical standards, and put the predators in prison and try to reform them. That would be ridiculous because they're only animals. But you don't seem to be saying that anyway, if subsistence hunters are OK. If the "industrial scale" is the main point, that looks like a solid argument - except why focus on animals? There's also tree plantations, mines, cities, and anything else that isn't sitting in the jungle doing craftwork.
rsynnott 2y ago
Beyond the animal aspect, producing leather is a _horrendously_ dirty process, and particularly difficult to clean up even if the manufacturers want to. Note where it's produced; despite the EU having more cows than China, say, China's production is far, far larger than Europe's, and Europe's is falling sharply as grace periods on RoHS etc compliance run out. China's recently been on a bit of an air and water pollution improvement binge, after the situation became really bad at the start of the century, so one would wonder how long that Chinese leather industry is for the world.
troyvit 2y ago
Here are a few links that support what you say: https://ecocult.com/is-leather-truly-a-byproduct-of-the-meat-industry/ https://ecocult.com/is-leather-truly-a-byproduct-of-the-meat... https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-18/america-is-obsessed-with-beef-but-it-has-no-use-for-hides-so-leather-prices-plunge https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-18/america-is... I don't see any downside (in the U.S. at least) to curbing our desire for meat. We are over-fed, and most of us get much more protein than our bodies can use (https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/are-you-getting-too-much-protein https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...).

by donatj 2y ago

Arn_Thor 2y ago

Not “purely” as a byproduct. They are complementary industries. Without the leather trade, meat producers would have to pay to properly dispose of that byproduct. I agree that would be wasteful, and I love quality leather products myself. But I recognize that the leather, meat and dairy lobbies all work towards the same goal of ever expanding the industry. So I am always on the lookout for great vegan leather. If the demand market dries up, this will raise the cost of meat and dairy, which will give alternatives to those a better chance to thrive.

donatj 2y ago
I think you are mistaken. If meat industry disappeared, I don't believe the leather industry would exist on any sort of comparable scale. People would not be raising cows and devoting fields to feed and the whole chain of events that goes into slaughting and animal for it's skin. Leather would be profoundly expensive. The meat industry on the other hand would be largely unaffected if the leather industry disappeared. They just need to find something else to do with the skin, and they would over night.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  > They just need to find something else to do with the skin, and they would over night. Not even. The skin would go into the same grinders as all of the "useless" parts of the animal and become whatever downstream products it becomes (dog food, protein additives for animal feed, etc)
  - tbossanova 2y ago
    Presumably they would earn less money for this than for leather, hence making it less profitable if only marginally.
- Arn_Thor 2y ago
  To say they're complementary doesn't mean that they depend on each other to an equal degree. I don't believe it would be easy to find a use for all that cow skin. Think of the enormous amounts. But even if they did find a use for it that doesn't cost them, it's not likely to be nearly as profitable as selling it as an input to the leather industry. (If there was a more profitable way to use cow skin we'd probably be doing that by now)

weinzierl 2y ago

I toured the BMW works several times and I remember that they stressed that they can only use raw hide from special farms because most on the market has too many blemishes for example from barbed wire.

Voultapher 2y ago

As others have noted, it's not a pure byproduct and if you believe that the way we treat cattle is immoral, singling out one industrial scale consumer of animal products in a web of interconnected and interdependent industries and saying changing them won't change the bigger picture is in isolation correct. But it misses the bigger picture, if you believe for ideological reasons, that there is no moral way to use animals at industrial scale - the same way that thinking of slavery as something negative is a subjective ideological stance, one that wasn't the mainstream opinion of many societies over time - dismantling the leather industry won't get you all the way there, but it's a step. To take a personal stance, I draw the arbitrary line at insects, I'm fine with farming plants and insects in some kind of harmony with nature, but not mammals or fish. Live on earth is a co-op, you don't win by being the last species standing.

card_zero 2y ago
Gazelles cooperate with leopards, you say?
- Voultapher 2y ago
  That's an old trope. I'm not talking about the individual level. But even in your example, if the Leopards hunt Gazelles and other Prey animals to extinction, there won't be any Leopards, inversely hunters play a crucial role in keeping populations of animals in a sustainable equilibrium. It's possible to read your comment as the old trope of, if other animals kill to live why can't we? Well I'd be surprised if you'd argue that one person killing another over a personal grievance is the same thing as committing genocide on purpose. Yes both involve the killing of humans, but there are some substantial qualitative differences. I purposefully talk about industrial scale animal use. It's something completely different for indigenous people to hunt and use animals. The latter I have no moral objections too.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Quibbles: leopards don't deliberately refrain from hunting their prey to extinction, humans do deliberately refrain from eating the entire population of cows and pigs and sheep, and leopards aren't motivated a personal grievance against gazelles. (Man, that gazelle is such an ass! I'm gonna eat him.) Then there's the ethics bit, which goes like: * We should not say animals are "only animals" and use that as a reason to eat them, that would be unethical, * Furthermore, we should not hold them to the same ethical standards, and put the predators in prison and try to reform them. That would be ridiculous because they're only animals. But you don't seem to be saying that anyway, if subsistence hunters are OK. If the "industrial scale" is the main point, that looks like a solid argument - except why focus on animals? There's also tree plantations, mines, cities, and anything else that isn't sitting in the jungle doing craftwork.

rsynnott 2y ago

Beyond the animal aspect, producing leather is a _horrendously_ dirty process, and particularly difficult to clean up even if the manufacturers want to. Note where it's produced; despite the EU having more cows than China, say, China's production is far, far larger than Europe's, and Europe's is falling sharply as grace periods on RoHS etc compliance run out. China's recently been on a bit of an air and water pollution improvement binge, after the situation became really bad at the start of the century, so one would wonder how long that Chinese leather industry is for the world.

troyvit 2y ago

Here are a few links that support what you say: https://ecocult.com/is-leather-truly-a-byproduct-of-the-meat-industry/ https://ecocult.com/is-leather-truly-a-byproduct-of-the-meat... https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-18/america-is-obsessed-with-beef-but-it-has-no-use-for-hides-so-leather-prices-plunge https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-18/america-is... I don't see any downside (in the U.S. at least) to curbing our desire for meat. We are over-fed, and most of us get much more protein than our bodies can use (https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/are-you-getting-too-much-protein https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...).