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UNFAIR TO COWS
The influential tanning industry
publication
World Leather
has since
responded to Mr Zeitz’s criticism of
cattle via a letter in the FT pointing out
that this is less than entirely fair. An
equally influential academic from the
University of Colorado who acts as a
consultant to the US beef and cattle
industry, Dr Temple Grandin, has made
the point that much of the agricultural
land on the face of the earth is
unsuitable for growing crops and that
allowing cattle, sheep and goats (the
mainstays of the leather industry) to
graze there is the best utilisation of such
land for growing food. The populations
of countries such as China, India and
other developing countries, all hungry
for meat, would doubtless also support
that view.
Global meat consumption not
surprisingly therefore remains high (the
UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization
predicts beef production of 67.5 million
tonnes in 2012 and continuing to rise
going forward) and where there is beef,
there will be hides. In Brazil alone, meat
companies produced 28.8 million hides
in 2011. We really would have an
environmental problem if they all went
into landfill and, as beef appears likely
to remain part of the food chain long
into the future, so will hides as an
inevitable by-product.
Furthermore, she insists that a
correctly used rotational grazing system
is an effective way to encourage plant
growth on land unsuited to growing
crops, which in turn helps capture more
carbon from the atmosphere. The
Colorado-based academic also states
that ruminant animals that eat grass are
not the environmental wreckers that
some people say they are and that good
cattle farming may in fact compare
favourably with rice production. Despite
being a hugely important food source in
much of the world, Dr Grandin claims
rice paddies, with their warm,
waterlogged soil, are likely to account—
together with coal-fired power stations
and landfill sites—for 80% of all
methane emissions. Cows, meanwhile,
offset their admitted carbon emissions
by grazing land and so stimulating new
carbon-capturing plant growth.
UNFAIR TO RANCHERS
Another of Jochen Zeitz’s objections
to leather is particularly relevant to
Brazil. Campaign group Greenpeace has
long claimed there are links between
illegal deforestation in Amazonia and
the global leather industry. It says the
hides of cattle farmed on deforested
land are going to tanneries that supply
prominent footwear and fashion brands
around the world. Its continued
accusations against one meat and
tanning group in particular, JBS, landed
it in a Brazilian court in June. JBS refuted
each of a series of specific criticisms in a
document in which the campaign group
named JBS suppliers that it said were
raising cattle on illegally cleared land.
JBS said the information was incorrect
and a judge agreed, ordering
Greenpeace to stop its campaign in
Brazil or face a daily penalty of $25,000
in damages.
Apart from deforestation, cattle
ranches in Amazonia have faced
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SUSTAINABILITY MUST BE BALANCED
21st century tanneries are as clean and pollution free as in any other modern industry.
CREDIT: WTP
Jochen Zeitz’s comments have been less
than fair to cows.
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012 | www.footwearbiz.com