A desolate road, mountains of hides left rotting in the sun along with garbage, an old man standing there perhaps hoping to pull in some change. It looks like a horror movie, but these are the images coming from the Turkish province of Gaziantep. Images to be shown to those who dream of a tanning-free world.
The two tracks of the Feast of Sacrifice
From June 15 to 19, a Sacrifice Feast was held, and we discussed about it in connection with Bangladesh, as there is a spike in the number of animals slaughtered (especially of sheep and goats, among others) in countries with a Muslim majority, with a related surge in the collection of raw hides. Here, the celebration is the best opportunity to demonstrate how the meat and leather markets travel on different tracks, as the food industry delivers animals to slaughterhouses to meet market demands of the food market, while tanning recovers one of its by-products according to calculated demand from fashion and design. When the two tracks are not traveling at the same speed, as in the current conjuncture, the raw hides go from being a useful by-product for other purposes, to the status of simple waste.
Pictures to be shown
That is why the video circulated on social media by Turkish Magazine Leather should be shown to all those who dream of a tanning-free world. That is to say, to animal rights activists focused on fashion products, to vegans following the marketing statements of Stella McCartney, to the marketing “enthusiasts” of PETA: to those who believe that eliminating leather from brands and designer collections will help reduce slaughter (or “save lives,” in their head). But that’s not the case: without the circular role of the tanning industry, we would simply end up with one more type of industrial waste to dispose of. With the environmental damage that follows.
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