Facts About Animal-Derived Clothing and Accessories

Toxins emitted from leather tanneries threaten the health of humans as well as the ecology. Nearby waterways become polluted with mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, oils, dyes, salt, lime sludge, sulfides and acids. Leukemia occurs more often than average in the residents of tannery towns, and over half of all testicular cancer patients work in tanneries.

Tremendous amounts of fossil fuel are consumed in raising, transporting, and killing animals for food and leather. In contrast, plastic wearables constitute less than 1% of the petroleum used.

Snakes and lizards are often skinned alive; they can take four days to die. A blow to the head to avoid damage to the hide also leads to a slow, agonizing death.

Ranched alligators are crowded into concrete buildings stinking of rancid meat, excrement, and stagnant water. Their life spans are 40 to 60 years, but on farms, they're butchered by the age of 4. To protect their hide, they're often beaten to death with hammers and axes, and can take up to 2 hours to die. Crocodiles are caught with large hooks and reeled in when they drown or weaken from blood loss. Twenty-five to 30% of imported crocodile shoe leather and other wildlife items are made from endangered animals.

Ostriches are raised and then killed for their skin, their meat, their feathers, and even their eyelashes.

Endangered olive ridley sea turtles die by the thousands each year in Mexico and are butchered for their skins to make clothing and souvenir items.

Baby lambs' ears are hole-punched, their tails chopped off, and the males castrated without anesthetic. Mortality rates, which are considered normal, are 20-40% (lambs that die before 8 weeks). In addition, 8 million adult sheep die each year from disease, exposure, and neglect.

Australia is the world's top wool producer (80%). The Merino breed, which most ranchers raise, has extremely wrinkled skin, which allows more wool to grow and can cause death from heat exhaustion in the summer. The moisture collected by the wrinkles results in maggot infestations (flystrike). To treat this serious problem, an operation called "mulesing" carves wide strips of skin from around the tail and produces smooth scars that won't harbor fly larvae. But the open, bloody wounds often develop flystrike before healing. Australian sheep undergo more than 50 million operations a year, such as mulesing and tooth-grinding, that would be considered cruelty if performed on dogs and cats.

Ranchers often shear sheep before they naturally shed their winter coats, resulting in millions of sheep dying from cold exposure. Some seven million aging sheep are exported in tiered ships to the Middle East (a 3- to 6-week journey), during which up to 18% of the sheep die. The ones that make it are ritually slaughtered while fully conscious.

Down comes from ducks and geese. One goose may survive four to five pluckings. As soon as it becomes less profitable to keep the geese for down, they are slaughtered. Down alternatives are cheaper, cruelty-free, and much more efficient at keeping out the cold and moisture.

Silk is produced by boiling silkworms alive by the thousands.

As a side tragedy to the sheep and cattle industry in the U.S., coyotes are poisoned, shot, and burned alive by the hundreds of thousands each year by ranchers and our own government. We as taxpayers pay for the slaughter.

In Australia, kangaroos are slaughtered at the rate of 5 million a year because they are considered pests who eat the grass that ranchers covet for their sheep and cows. Kangaroos are killed by being run down by trucks, poisoned, beaten, or impaling them and skinning them alive. Joeys (young kangaroos) are considered a waste of a bullet and are often killed by being thrown against a tree or kicked in the head. At the Sydney Olympics, kangaroo steaks were among the culinary delicacies tossed on the barbie for tourists.

Other animal-derived clothing and accessory items are eelskin, ivory, pearls, feathers, angora, cashmere, and felt.

So what's left to wear? Quite a lot. Items made of canvas, ramie, cotton, vinyl, nylon, rayon, straw, faux pearls, plastic, rubber, and hemp, for example. Shoe stores such as Payless sell non-leather shoes and purses, and most stores sell animal-kind clothing and accessories.

How can you help get out the truth about animal-cruel clothing and accessories? By writing letters to the editor; sending e-mail to, or phoning your legislators to support animal protection legislation; informing the managers of stores that sell animal products that you as a consumer are unhappy with their policy; and making friends and family aware of the sad plight of millions of animals in the U.S. as well as worldwide.