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Not Your Coat
Leather is not just a byproduct of the food industry. More than a billion animals die for their skins every year.
Clothing made from leather, wool, silk, fur, down, and other animal-derived materials is often treated as separate from the broader conversation about animal exploitation. But these materials come from industries that breed, confine, handle, transport, and kill animals for human use.
Leather is made from animal skin, most commonly from cows, but also from calves, goats, sheep, pigs, ostriches, crocodiles, snakes, and other animals. Leather is sometimes described as simply a byproduct of the meat industry, but animal skins have economic value and contribute to the profitability of animal agriculture. Animals raised for leather may endure the same confinement, transport, handling, and slaughter associated with meat production. Some species are also raised or killed primarily for their skins. Turning an animal’s body into clothing does not erase the suffering involved in producing it.
Wool comes primarily from sheep, who have been selectively bred to produce far more fleece than their wild ancestors. Commercial shearing is performed for speed and efficiency, and animals can suffer cuts, rough handling, stress, and injury. In some parts of the industry, painful procedures such as mulesing are used to reduce flystrike. Sheep are also routinely bred, transported, sold, and ultimately slaughtered when their wool production declines or they are no longer economically useful.
Silk is produced by silkworms, usually the domesticated moth Bombyx mori. To harvest conventional silk, cocoons are commonly heated or boiled before the moth emerges, killing the developing insect inside so the long silk filament remains intact. Enormous numbers of silkworms are used to produce relatively small amounts of finished fabric.
Other materials raise similar concerns. Down is taken from ducks and geese and may come from birds raised for meat or foie gras; some supply chains have also been linked to live-plucking. Fur production confines animals such as mink, foxes, and raccoon dogs in intensive systems or traps wild animals for their pelts. Animal-derived fibers such as cashmere, mohair, alpaca, angora, and camel hair all depend on using animals as sources of raw material, often within commercial systems where welfare is secondary to production.
The ethical issue is broader than whether a particular garment involved the “worst” possible form of cruelty. These industries treat animals as resources whose bodies can be bred, modified, handled, and killed for human purposes.
Today, clothing can be made from a wide range of plant-based, recycled, and synthetic materials. No alternative is environmentally perfect, but avoiding animal-derived fabrics removes the need to use animals themselves as raw materials.
Animals should not have to lose their freedom, their bodies, or their lives so that we can dress ourselves.
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