Indian leather

July 12, 2004

I was always viewed India as the last stand country in many ways including cow protection. Looks like I was a bit naiveIndian Animals Killed for Leather

While many Hindus still hold cows as sacred, most people look the other way as cows, buffaloes, and bullocks are killed for meat and leather. Many international retailers routinely use skins from cows slaughtered in India. The slaughter of cows is legal in only a few Indian states, which means that cattle marked for slaughter must travel by road in a death march for hundreds of miles to the few states where slaughter is legal. In 1999, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk led a team to India to investigate complaints received from caring Indian citizens about the treatment of cows, buffaloes, and other animals killed to meet the demand for leather in the West, particularly in the United States and the European Union. What the team found would disturb the most hard-hearted.

Newkirk's team included Manfred Karremann, a German photo-journalist who documented gentle old Indian bulls and other animals being goaded onto trucks designed for fewer than half their numbers. The team saw that the animals' legs were often broken and their necks painfully twisted to make more room inside the vehicles. Animals inadvertently smothered one another and gouged and blinded each other with their horns. Live animals struggled under the dead and dying for hours during long, hot journeys to the slaughterhouse. Some animals were made to walk between trucking points and were beaten and forced to move forward, even when totally exhausted, by having chili seeds rubbed into their eyes and by having their tails broken by handlers. At most slaughterhouses, animals who survived transport were dragged inside, where they were able to see others dying before they themselves were cut, skinned, and dismembered, often while still conscious. </a>

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