Patched! Are wool and leather really that bad?
From animal rights to the far right - a look into rainforests, tanneries and sheep farms
Hello and welcome back to Patched.
In between my regular newsletter I send out Patched - a series where people ask me a fashion (or fashion-adjacent) question, and I reply with a short letter from an anti-capitalist perspective. If you have a question, please email me at: DearPatched@proton.me or reply to this email.
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Tansy Hoskins
Dear Patched: Should I give up leather and wool?
Dear Patched,
Are wool and leather really that bad? A friend of mine has done Veganuary (going vegan for the month of January) and was talking about the need to also extend that to not buying animal products for our wardrobes.
I’m a bit on the fence about that. I understand why people wouldn’t want to wear fur, crocodile skins or other materials where animals suffer and die for fashion alone. But wool and leather are by-products of the meat industry.
I don’t eat meat, but most people do, and it just seems wasteful to get rid of the skins and fleeces when they could be put to good use. I’ll never wear fur or wild-animal skins – but I’m not sure whether I should give up leather and wool.
What are your thoughts on these materials?
Thank you, Unsure.
Dear Unsure,
Thank you for your letter.
I’m sure a lot of people will relate to the conditioning that makes us treat different species differently. ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ as George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm.
But is this difference legitimate? And could overturning it be part of an existential battle for the planet? I decided to ask an expert.
“Whether animals are exploited for their skin, fur, fleece, or feathers, the story is strikingly similar: confinement, rough handling, painful mutilations, and ultimately, slaughter,” explains Sascha Camilli, Manager of PR Projects at PETA UK. “At PETA we call leather “hairless fur” – because when it comes to the suffering involved, there really is no difference at all.”
The horrific scenes that PETA discovered while investigating sheep farms have left Sascha, who is also the author of the Vegan Style book and the Kind of Wild substack, with no time for wool: “Contrary to what many people believe, sheep in the wool industry don’t get to live out their lives on a farm. After a lifetime of rough handling and abuse, they’re sent to the slaughterhouse when their wool production drops.”
Animals' bodies don't belong to us
So how can we shift our mindset? How can we break down the mental divide between crocodiles and sheep?
“Animals’ bodies don’t belong to us, and they aren’t ‘merchandise’ for us to use. Once you see that, it becomes much harder to justify turning any animal's body parts into a fashion garment,” Sascha says. “The real question we should be asking when buying clothes isn't whether the animal was a crocodile, a fox, a cow, or a sheep. It's whether an animal suffered and died for what we’re wearing.”
To answer the by-product question, I also think it is more helpful to view leather and fleece as a co-product of the meat industry because that’s what they are. The profits made from the carcass of a dead animal are not just calculated upon meat, but also for skin (and bones and offal). Leather is a key part of what makes industrial animal farming big business.
Just plastic?
I have a suspicion that some people will read this far, be convinced, but think hmmm isn’t vegan leather just plastic?
While some is, it is important to remember two things. Firstly, vegan leathers have come a long way and now include material made from cactus, corn, wine grapes, pineapples, olive pits, apple peel… My personal favourite is mushroom leather – strong, soft and resplendent with colours that resemble the rings of Saturn. Secondly, as Sascha points out, animal leather is very much not free from plastic as they are, for example, often coated in PU to improve durability.
Neither is animal leather chemical free. I investigated the leather industry while writing my book 'Foot Work' and I’ve never looked at it the same since. One study found Bangladeshi tannery workers have a 90 per cent chance of dying before the age of fifty due to the toxic chemicals they work with. [Yes, you read that correctly.]
The far right are helping cut down the rainforest
If that does not make leather utterly unpalatable, then we should also never, ever forget that cattle farming is the number one cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The lungs of the world are being felled to provide steaks and trainers. Communities attacked, species lost, tree after tree cut down.
This leather is sold globally. There are dozens of reputable investigations linking EU leather to illegal deforestation and human rights abuses: Earthsight, Global Witness, Rainforest Foundation Norway and the Environmental Investigation Agency have traced leather used in European fashion and cars to cattle raised on illegally deforested land in the Brazilian Amazon and on stolen Indigenous territory in Paraguay’s Chaco region.
We might hope the authorities would take notice and stop this trade but after intense lobbying from the European leather industry in collusion with the far-right, the European Commission is actually considering removing leather from the EU Deforestation Regulations (EUDR).
Big business and the far right want to burn the rainforest, kill a billion animals every year and make Earth unlivable. Personally I hopped off the fence and decided to reject this approach in its entirety!
What you decide to do is up to you, but I believe we need to live in harmony with the planet and the non-human species that occupy it alongside us. We need an end to the corporate destruction of our world and an end to the rise of the far right. This can start (but not end) with something as simple as changing the fabrics we choose to bring into our lives.
In solidarity,
Tansy.
p.s. Thank you so much for reading. I'm so grateful to you for being here and for being interested in my work. As a thank you, I am currently trying to organise some book exclusives just for this newsletter. Thank you!
p.p.s In case you missed it: