Animal Protection organisation PETA active at Fashion Week Berlin

Leather is a Rip-Off! Fashion industry abuse of animals.

During fashion week Berlin 2018 PETA -  the German organisation for the protection of animals -  organized the first ever  performance to take place in Berlin to demonstrate against the use of leather within the fashion industry. All people who attend demos from PETA are supporters who give their voice to animals voluntarily and in their spare time as they care about their well-being.

We contacted Johanna Fuoß, PETA Fachreferentin für Tiere in der Bekleidungsindustrie and she told us as followes:

We portrayed a human getting skinned alive to encourage visitors of the fashion week and designers to think about the origin of animal leather. Animals feel pain just as we do. For every bag, jacket or shoe made of leather animals have their throats cut and some are even skinned and dismembered while they are still conscious. Every single one of us can help to stop animal cruelty by choosing vegan fashion.

Because most people refuse to wear real fur and designers are getting creative with luxurious faux furs, PETA wants to shine a spotlight on the other victims of fashion—those suffering for the leather trade. Leather is one of the most valuable products of the meat industry, which means that it is a direct contributor to the horrors of factory farming and the slaughter of millions of animals each year. By “skinning” a person alive, we want to highlight the fact that in Germany alone, more than 330.000 cows are skinned while being fully conscious as stunning technologies often fail. 

But the suffering of animals for leather products is widespread and worldwide. In India PETA Germany exposed that cows have their tails broken and chili peppers and tobacco rubbed into their eyes in order to force them to get back up and walk after they collapse on the long routes towards slaughterhouses. In Brazil another PETA Germany exposé showed young calves being branded with hot irons in their faces and workers used painful electroshocks to get cows to move forward. A PETA Asia investigation in China revealed that dogs are bludgeoned and killed so that their skin can be turned into leather gloves, belts, jacket collar trim, cat toys, and other accessories that are sold all around the globe.

Leather also wreaks havoc on the environment as the skins are loaded with chemicals to keep them from decomposing. Tanneries are notorious for polluting the surrounding land and water, and tannery workers are often exposed to excessive amounts of toxic chemicals, including formaldehyde. Tannery effluent also contains large amounts of other pollutants, such as lime sludge, sulfides, and acids. Factory-farm runoff is a leading source of water pollution making the leather industry one of the most polluting businesses in the world.

Fortunately Producing leather without harming animals and nature is becoming a reality with science and innovation. BOSS Menswear now offers high-quality vegan shoes made of pineapple leather, a material known as Piñatex. MuSkin recreates the texture of leather with mushrooms and Modern Meadow can grow skin without using animals by using biotechnology. There a many cruelty-free alternatives to leather and with our protest we are asking people and designers to use it. 

We hope that further performances will follow for the upcoming Fashion Weeks in Berlin and other cities around the globe.

All images courtesy of PETA Deutschland.

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