I have been pondering this. Most non-vegans do wear leather, figuring it is a by-product of the meat production process; they are not themselves killing any cows. But when you buy leather, you make animal slaughter more lucrative. This suggests that you will get more of it. It may push down the cost of meat, or encourage ranchers to put marginal pasture into grazing, but either way, wearing leather probably means more dead pigs and cows. Even restricting your purchase to vintage items ultimately probably contributes to the death of extra animals, since vintage shoes are substitutes for new ones, and if you buy that pair of pumps, someone else will splurge on a new pair instead.
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The question is always how far you want to take it... I mean, should a vegan not use chalk? Reminds me of the level 7 vegan from the Simpsons, vegans who don't eat anything that casts a shadow.
What about using medicines (not merely cosmetics) that were tested on animals?
My wife is a meat eater and an animal lover. So she orders her steak medium-rare, but refuses to wear leather or use any products tested on animals. She justifies it somehow, I’m sure. People are rarely supremely rational in their lives. So, I guess I am saying there is no general rule for this kind of thing.
If an animal is slaughtered for food (and they will be, vegetarianism of any flavor is not that prevalent) it is wasteful not to use every part of the animal that can be used.
This is very different from raising animals, such as mink, specifically for their "leather" which I find disgusting and wasteful.
I think my leather purse is more ecologically friendly than a vinyl one would be. Not to mention it looks better and will last much longer.
Well, if you reject real leather but buy imitation leather instead, you then become indistinguishable, in the public eye, from those people who would like to wear real leather but can't afford it; and so by contributing to the rarity and thus the prestige of leather, your action would help support the demand, and thus negate any benefit you would create by denying yourself genuine leather.
So if you're going to do this, you should try to avoid products that even look like they're leather.
The one that always confounds me is vegans not eating honey, but happy to eat produce pollinated by captive bees. How is that rationalized?
I think the more puzzling question is tripe. Human demand for tripe (and other offal) doesn't make killing cows more profitable, it just means that they put less of the stuff into dog food. So why don't vegans eat tripe?
So why don't vegans eat tripe?
People who think milk is full of cow pus are unlikely to be persuaded that tripe has been adequately washed.
the answer is obviously no. khadi leather may count as certified humane leather tho its not yet sold here. i think it was emerson who said 'we're the missing link between animals & civilized man' & the threads amply demonstrate that
I think the question assumes too much. Some people might choose to eat a vegetarian diet for health reasons rather than ethical reasons. The question assumes that one is a vegetarian for ethical reasons related to animal suffering and death. If one is a vegetarian for ethical reasons, then it is inconsistent to wear leather, but if one is a vegetarian for health reasons (lower calorie diet, no cholesterol, etc.), then there is no inconsistency.
Isn't the interesting question the quantity of value produced by the cow coming from the leather vs. the meat? If 5% of what the farmer gets comes from leather sales, it matters what you wear. At .5% it's not a big deal.
MM-
If worrying about such things keeps vegetarians from prosletyzing then I say they definitely should worry about it, along with wondering how many leather-wearing vegetarians fit on the head of a pin.
Seriously, there must be more important things for us, vegetarian or not, to worry about.
To elaborate on John's comment: Well, Megan, it rather depends on why one is a vegetarian, doesn't it?
If one is a vegetarian because one simply dislikes meat, or it disagrees with one's metabolism, then that tells one nothing about whether or not one should wear leather, or even mount a set of cow horns on one's vehicle.
If one is a vegetarian because one thinks raising cows is bad for The Planet, I think it's still defensible (leaving aside my fundamental disagreements with the core proposition involved) simply because there's far more cow and pig hide produced already than can be utilised in the leather industry, to my knowledge.
Marginal increases in demand for it are unlikely to cause more breeding of cows; my understanding of the leather market is that most of the issue is the cost of processing, outside of luxury leather goods, where absolute-top-quality leather is required, that most cowhides don't provide.
Sneaker-grade leather is abundant enough that I don't think the marginal demand of even several thousand pairs of shoes a year from vegetarians changing their mind would have any effect on the number of animals butchered.
Only the "it's bad to eat beef because it kills cows and cows have the same right to live that we do" vegetarians/vegans have any strong other-than-purely-personal reason to not buy/wear leather.
I agree wholehearted with MM - stop worrying about all this crap. How can you walk down a street without killing a few bugs? Maybe you should all worry yourselves to death and we won't have to listen any more.....
All of this makes the vegan community sound like a bunch of orthodox Jews or Catholics - there has got to be a rule for everything, because you are better than everyone, and you better not break those rules or we will turn you into hamburger....Oops!
but either way, wearing leather probably means more dead pigs and cows.
Not sure what this has to do with the pigs, but in any case, wearing less leather probably means fewer cows ever get the chance to live, so it kinda cuts both ways.
i'm late to this party, but how do ethical vegans respond to the repugnant conclusion issue (that there's a great sum of happiness if you add all the miserable factory farmed cows to the happy cows, so it's not bad to have factory cows)?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/
Rob Lyman wrote: People who think milk is full of cow pus are unlikely to be persuaded that tripe has been adequately washed.
I think milk is delicious and I'm not persuaded that tripe has been adequately washed. I tried the menudo once; it tasted like half-digested grass.
robertl,
You carry a soft broom/brush and sweep gently before you as you go.
Seriously.
Not only that, but absent its use for meat and dairy production, Bos taurus would unlikely exist at all at this point, as the aurochs (the feral version of the species which European and Near East cattle are derived from) went extinct hundreds of years ago.
I'm a vegetarian who regards leather shoes as an unfortunate necessity, because all the vegetarian shoes I've ever bought (and I've bought 6 pairs so far) have been really, really bad. The best ones now breathe (though not as well as leather) but they tend to be MUCH too stiff and poorly engineered (so you can't walk far in them without foot pain). Hopefully the technology will improve.
I do avoid leather jackets and purses (my purses are microfiber, which looks good and wears well, or I sew them myself out of synthetic ultrasuede).
i'm late to this party, but how do ethical vegans respond to the repugnant conclusion issue (that there's a great sum of happiness if you add all the miserable factory farmed cows to the happy cows, so it's not bad to have factory cows)?
You respond simply by denying that factory-farmed animals live lives that are worth living overall.
As an agriculturalist in the mid west I have never agreed with some of the reasons behind people being "vegetarians" The people who claim that they use no animal products at all are some of the biggest liars out there. It is close to impossible to find any product that is not made from some animal byproduct. We also must remember that our nation is built around animal agriculture. It's what our economy depends on. Without the farmers here in rural America our nation would cease to be a power in this world. Don't you think that we should support our heritage. And as far as animals being a polluting factor in the world, What about all of the man made chemicals and diseases??? Course I'm just a simple country person, what do I know.