Most leather comes from cows raised from both milk & beef. Cows raised for beef spend most of their entire lives on extremely crowded feedlots. Ranchers maximize profits by giving each steer less than 20 square feet of living space - the equivalent of putting twelve half-ton steers in a typical American bedroom. I cannot even fathom that - I wouldn't be happy living in an American bedroom myself.
These earthlings are subjected to painful procedures such as branding (which causes 3rd degree burns), castration, de-horning, and talk-docking - all without painkillers. They are deprived of veterinary care and exposed to the elements without any shelter. These feeling, thinking, breathing animals who feel pain just as much as you and I do, suffer immensely. They are also fed a steady diet of hormones to fatten them up & antibiotics to keep them alive in these cruel deathly environments. At the end of their short (but what feels like an eternity to them), dismal lives, they are jam-packed into metal trucks, where they suffer from injury, hunger and thirst. They are confused and terrified in crowded conditions and even during weather extremes. In the winter, cows arrive for slaughter frozen to the sides of transport trucks, frozen to truck bottoms in their own feces and urine, and are injured or dead from the journey. Frequently collapsing during their hellish ride, many arrive to the slaughterhouse unable to walk out of the back of the transport truck, so they are dragged off with chains, often breaking bones when they hot the ground.
Every year, tens of millions of cows are stunned, hung upside-down, bled to death, and skinned in 'murderhouses.' The federal Humane Slaughter Act stipulates that cows should be stunned by a mechanical blow to the head and rendered unconscious before they are strung up, but the high speed of the assembly lines - which often process up to 400 cows per hour - often results in improper stunning. Each year, millions are skinned and dismembered while kicking and crying out in terror.
Buying leather DIRECTLY contributes to factory farms and slaughterhouses because the skin is the most economically important byproduct of the meat industry. There are PLENTY of non-leather, non-cruel products out there to choose from, including cotton, canvas, linen, rubber, ramie, and synthetics!
These earthlings are subjected to painful procedures such as branding (which causes 3rd degree burns), castration, de-horning, and talk-docking - all without painkillers. They are deprived of veterinary care and exposed to the elements without any shelter. These feeling, thinking, breathing animals who feel pain just as much as you and I do, suffer immensely. They are also fed a steady diet of hormones to fatten them up & antibiotics to keep them alive in these cruel deathly environments. At the end of their short (but what feels like an eternity to them), dismal lives, they are jam-packed into metal trucks, where they suffer from injury, hunger and thirst. They are confused and terrified in crowded conditions and even during weather extremes. In the winter, cows arrive for slaughter frozen to the sides of transport trucks, frozen to truck bottoms in their own feces and urine, and are injured or dead from the journey. Frequently collapsing during their hellish ride, many arrive to the slaughterhouse unable to walk out of the back of the transport truck, so they are dragged off with chains, often breaking bones when they hot the ground.
Every year, tens of millions of cows are stunned, hung upside-down, bled to death, and skinned in 'murderhouses.' The federal Humane Slaughter Act stipulates that cows should be stunned by a mechanical blow to the head and rendered unconscious before they are strung up, but the high speed of the assembly lines - which often process up to 400 cows per hour - often results in improper stunning. Each year, millions are skinned and dismembered while kicking and crying out in terror.
Buying leather DIRECTLY contributes to factory farms and slaughterhouses because the skin is the most economically important byproduct of the meat industry. There are PLENTY of non-leather, non-cruel products out there to choose from, including cotton, canvas, linen, rubber, ramie, and synthetics!
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