The Global Leather Coordinating Committee (GLCC) recently issued an open letter to Jose Manuel Martínez Gutiérrez, executive director and CEO of clothing giant Esprit Holdings, about his company’s endorsement of misleading claims made by PETA regarding the global leather manufacturing industry.
Esprit has adopted PETA’s ‘Certified Vegan Leather’ mark on a number of its footwear product lines, endorsing the claims the fringe group has made about production and manufacturing of leather globally.
In the letter, the GLCC notes that animal hides and skins are an inevitable by-product of global meat and dairy consumption, disputing allegations by the animal rights group that cattle, pigs and other food-producing animals are harvested purely for leather production.
"In a world where meat or dairy products continue to be consumed," the letter notes, "there is a moral obligation by consumers to use all parts of the animal."
