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Millions of cows, pigs, sheep, and goats are slaughtered for their skin every year. They are castrated, branded, and dehorned and have their tails docked without anesthetics. Then they are trucked to slaughter, bled to death, and skinned. Leather is not simply a slaughterhouse byproduct-it’s a booming industry. The meat industry relies on skin sales to stay in business because the skin represents the most economically important byproduct of the meat-packing industry, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Animal skin is turned into finished leather through the use of dangerous mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, cyanide-based oils and dyes, chrome, and other toxins.
People who have worked in and lived near tanneries are dying of cancer caused by exposure to toxic chemicals used to process and dye the leather. A New York State Department of Health study found that more than half of all testicular cancer victims work in tanneries.
When you buy leather products, you may be purchasing leather from Asian dog and cat tanneries; because product labeling rarely indicates where the skins originate, there’s no way to know for sure.
Visit CowsAreCool.com for more information on the leather industry
Whether it’s overuse of resources, water or air pollution, or soil erosion, raising animals for food is wreaking havoc on the Earth. In fact, raising animals for food requires more water than all other uses of water combined, causes more water pollution than any other activity, and is responsible for 85 percent of U.S. soil erosion. America’s meat addiction is steadily poisoning and depleting our land, water, and air.
Many environmental groups, including the National Audubon Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists, have recognized that raising animals for food has a worse effect on the planet than just about anything else we can do.
The most important step you can take to save the planet is to go vegetarian.
There is no such thing as a meat-eating environmentalist!
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