Our claims do not overreach: we just want leather to be protected, as much as milk is. That’s the gist of the request submitted to the European Commission by Cotance, the European union of tannery national associations. The new request, since Cotance had already sent a message to EU councils at the beginning of the year, is about regulations over a proper use of the term “leather”, aiming to standardise laws and make them clear. The problem is pretty practical: in fact, due to such legal misunderstandings, some manufacturers can play sly and deceitful, as they create new misleading words for consumers and use the term “leather” for other materials, thus discrediting the tanning industry. UNIC, as well as GLCC, have been striving for such issue for a long time. The matter keeps being rather slippery as new pitfalls come up consistently. For instance, Nike’s latest expedient as the US giant has called FlyLeather a leather fibre board material; Cotance emphasizes the fact that such action would be illegal in most EU countries. The tanning industry is sick of fighting alone for that. They just want the EC to safeguard leather as much as they have been protecting milk since last summer. Since you can’t call cheese something made of tofu, how can you possibly call leather something resulting from oil?
Cotance campaign against leather sounding as they urge Brussels “to safeguard leather as much as they protect milk”
