Whats wrong with leather?
Leather may be made from cows, pigs, goats, and sheep, or exotic animals like alligators, ostriches, and kangaroos. And according to PETA, China even exports skins from dogs and cats around the world. Since leather is normally not labeled, you never really know where (or whom) it came from. Most of the millions of animals slaughtered for their skin endure the horrors of factory farming before being shipped to slaughter, where many may be skinned alive. When you buy leather you are supporting factory farms and slaughterhouses since skin is the most economically important byproduct of the meat industry. Leather is also no friend of the environment since it shares all the environmental destruction of the meat industry, in addition to the toxins used in tanning. See our farm animals page, Meat production’s environmental toll, and PETA’s Leather: No friend of the Earth and Demand for Skins Drives a Deadly Industry for details.
