Are your shoes to die for?

Pollution from hundreds of tanneries has turned the Ganges into one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Exposure to harsh chemicals commonly used in leather production results in high rates of specific types of cancer as well as severe respiratory and skin disorders

Are your shoes worth more than a cow’s life? Is a handbag sold in London more valuable than an Indian worker’s life or that of a child? A wallet may hold your money, but should the Earth pay a price for it? The more I learned about leather production, the more the phrase ‘killer look’ started to mean something far more sinister than a fashionable ensemble.

I first visited a slaughterhouse in around 2000, when the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India first set up shop. Since then, my colleagues and I have followed many trucks transporting countless suffering animals and visited many slaughterhouses – and the story is always the same. Thinking, feeling, and panicking cows and buffaloes are reduced to pieces of skin for items such as belts and jackets. But that’s after they’ve been abused.

In many cases, the animals first endure miserable lives on filthy farms. Then they’re crammed onto vehicles so tightly that some suffocate, and several are crushed or wounded by others’ horns. When they arrive at the slaughterhouse, they are often kept for hours or days even if they are suffering from broken bones or gouged-out eyes without food or water. Eventually, workers usually slit their throats in full view of those who are standing or who have collapsed nearby. Many of these cruelties violate animal protection laws but are common, nonetheless.

In India, cattle are never raised solely for meat or for its co-product, leather. Yet India is a top beef-exporting nation, ranking first in the world a few years ago. Tests have proved that cow meat has been passed off as buffalo meat for export, which is illegal. India is also the world’s largest milk producer, and a key leather exporter. None of this is a coincidence. The beef and leather industries exist because the dairy industry supplies them with cattle to kill. Among these victims are discarded mother cows and buffaloes whose milk production has waned and male calves.

Humans are also abused by the leather industry, which contaminates the Earth with its waste. As stricter environmental and labour laws in industrialised countries started pushing leathermaking out, India and Bangladesh began picking it up, taking on the West’s dirty work. By 2007, 60 per cent of the world’s leather was produced in India and other developing nations. The leather industry boomed in places where toxins could be dumped into rivers or children could be put to work in chemical-filled tanning vats.

Pollution from hundreds of tanneries has turned the Ganges into one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Exposure to harsh chemicals commonly used in leather production, such as chromium, results in high rates of specific types of cancer — including lung, bladder, and kidney — as well as severe respiratory and skin disorders among those who live near or work in leather tanneries. The occupational hazards are so serious that some years ago, the World Health Organization reported that a whopping 90 per cent of tannery workers in the leather-treating area of Bangladesh died before turning 50. Also, many tannery workers are exploited children.

Around 20 years ago, it was reported that pollution from tanneries had put more than 36,056 farmers in various districts of Tamil Nadu out of work by damaging more than 17,170 hectares of farmland. These figures are considered an underestimate. In response, the farmers sought redress with the Supreme Court through the Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum, and even many years later, the agreed-upon compensation had yet to be fully paid and the farmland remains destroyed. In its petition, the forum noted that tannery waste was being dumped into the Palar River. In 2022, the water in this river was still described as ‘practically sludge’ due to tannery pollution.

Slowly but surely, India is making moves to say ‘No more’, and to stop this abuse of animals, waterways, and citizens. A couple of years ago, the Meghalaya government announced that it had begun exploring making leather from pineapples. The Chennai-based Central Leather Research Institute is making eco-friendly vegan leather out of agricultural waste and plants, such as mangos.

Things are changing abroad too. Responding to the demands of conscientious consumers, Crocs is now a vegan brand; Aldo’s Call It Spring, with hundreds of stores around the world, is entirely animal-free; Swedish carmaker Volvo has plans to go leather-free; and a growing number of retailers are now stocking items made of plant leather instead of animal skins.

We too can be part of this change for the better by wearing vegan fashions for that ‘killer look’.

(Poorva Joshipura is director, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India and author of Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals Is Key to Human Existence.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.