India's leather trade

Ever wonder what stops animal skins used for leather shoes and handbags from decomposing into a stinky, slimy mess? The answer is chromium tanning, which creates quite a mess of its own—including toxic wastewater and contaminated soil. According to a new report that ranks tannery operations fifth on a list of the world's worst toxic-pollution problems, chromium tanning also puts millions of people at risk for serious health problems.

In addition to the toxic tannery sludge, raising animals for food and leather requires huge amounts of feed, land, water, and fossil fuels. Because leather is a coproduct of the meat industry, if you wear it, you're also supporting an industry that routinely crams animals together in filthy conditions and sends them to slaughterhouses, where their throats are cut while they're still conscious. 

Many tanneries are concentrated in South Asia, where cows are subjected to horrendous abuse. PETA's investigation into the Indian leather trade revealed that cows are forced to walk for days without food or water on the way to slaughter. If they collapse, drivers rub chili peppers into their eyes and break their tails to get them up again.

To avoid contributing to the cruelty and pollution of leather, clean the skeletons out of your closet and check out PETA's shopping guide to cruelty-free clothing.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

With Pamela Anderson in the Bigg Boss house, we thought that people might like to see some of the hardworking staffers at PETA India who are helping to get the word out about Pamela's worldwide appeal not to wear leather:

When most of us in the U.S. are nestled all snug in our beds, our friends on the other side of the world are working to liberate animals from laboratories, to get schools to cut out dissection, to encourage people to always adopt and never buy dogs, and much, much more.

It's good to know that caring people around the world are fighting against cruelty to animals 24/7. Let's support PETA India's and Pam's efforts by encouraging our friends and family to give leather the boot!

Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post

Lately, it seems like PETA's BFF and honorary director Pamela Anderson is on the road more than Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in their heyday—she's trekked from London to Tel Aviv and is now in Mumbai, where she's a celebrity guest on the reality show Bigg Boss.

But as a superhero for animals, Pam can be counted on to speak out against cruelty wherever she goes, so she has sent a letter to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to help the cows who are abused and slaughtered in the cruel and gruesome Indian leather trade.

"India's laws prohibit animals from being crammed onto vehicles in such high numbers that their bones break, ban handlers from smearing chilli seeds into cows' eyes and breaking their tails, and prevent animals from standing in their own blood and being hacked to pieces in front of each other while still conscious, yet all this continues to go on, involving countless animals every day," Pam writes. "I am calling on every kind person in India and throughout the world to join me in rejecting all leather products in order to help put an end to the suffering."

Kekka / CC by 2.0

Thanks to the efforts of PETA India and Maneka Gandhi—the daughter-in-law of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and a staunch animal rights proponent—India's Central Board of School Education has banned leather shoes from school uniforms.

Leather shoes are seen as a vestige of British colonial rule, under which they were introduced as a requirement for Indian school uniforms. But in addition to the obvious cruelty to cows, leather shoes are unsuited to India's hot, humid climate, and leather manufacturing also takes a tremendous toll on the environment. Leather shoes in school uniforms will be replaced with comfortable, environmentally friendly, and easy-to-clean canvas plimsolls (no, not those Plimsouls).

PETA's campaign against Indian leather started a decade ago when PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk traveled to India to investigate the transport of cows to slaughterhouses. Since then, dozens of international retailers have agreed to stop purchasing Indian leather, costing the industry millions in lost revenue. Find out more about Ingrid's investigation here.

Written by Alisa Mullins

As if there weren't already enough terror attached to the loathsome leather trade, the notoriously cruel Indian leather industry has now been linked to Islamic terrorists groups. According to a recent article in The Times of India, the illegal cattle-smuggling trade, an integral part of the leather supply chain, has been funding terrorism in India. For years now, money made in this thriving racket has reportedly been funneled to various terrorists, including one of the men convicted of killing American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

It's pretty ironic that a country in which cows are considered sacred is one of the largest leather manufacturers in the world. In fact, Indian law makes it illegal to export cows. To get around this, traffickers force cattle to march hundreds of miles across the country. Marched for days without food or water, cows often collapse from exhaustion or despair, To keep them moving, workers smear the cows' eyes with chili peppers and tobacco and break the cows' tails. By the time the cows are crammed into illegal transport trucks and smuggled across the India-Bangladesh border, many are so sick and injured that they have to be dragged into the slaughterhouse—where their throats are slit while they are still alive.

I say we fight the war on terror by buying pleather and signing this petition to the Ambassador of India.

Written by Amy Elizabeth

My pals Jayasimha and Anuradha from PETA India have been busy little beavers this week, making sure the attendees of the Indian International Leather Fair (IILF) get an earful from the animal protection community, and they’ve held demos and press conferences of their own outside.

According to PETA India, 90 percent of all the leather exported from there comes from illegal slaughterhouses, which are completely unregulated and where the cruelty is beyond imagination. Despite the documented atrocities occurring daily at these hellholes, the Indian Council for Leather Exports says that it is premature to ask its members to source leather only from legal slaughterhouses. Wow, premature to stop breaking the law . . .

The kicker here is that nearly all Indian leather is exported overseas where it is made into everything from leather jackets and gloves to shoes and steering wheel covers, and it is almost always labeled as “Made in” the country where the final product is finished. So if you buy any leather products, there’s a decent chance that it came from India. And no, leather isn’t a byproduct of the meat industry—far from it, especially in India, where many of the cows are killed exclusively for their skins.

Sorry to get all preachy and heavy-handed in the blog, but this is just beyond the pale and it has to stop. Please don’t buy any leather and tell you friends and family to do the same.

Sermon over.