i dont have much to say but i want to know why sould we stop making leather and shit.
Towel2,
Welcome to Straight Dope.
Can you elaborate on your post a bit? Are you against the manufacture of products using animal parts (eg, leather) or are you for the production using those matereals? I’m asking because your title and post don’t quite lead to debate, more like just an in-my-humble-opinion type post.
Anyway, welcome to SD.
(Wow, Stemba. I commend you for your patience).
Cat Fight,
I don’t jump down EVERYONE’s throat at the first chance I get…
That is a good one…
Cat Fight,
It would be better if people around here didn’t jump at every new member’s throat. Because to new members it gives a very hostile impression of this excellent website. And an extremely immature and arrogant at that.
IMHO, if we use the entire animal for human use, I don’t really have any particular objection.
On the other hand, specifically killing animals for a specific body part (like killing elephants for their tusks alone) or hunting them to extinction is stupid.
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Leather. It would be fine by me if we used the hides from beef cows to make leather stuff. After all, the material is nearly one-of-a-kind.
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It’s kind of difficult for me to stop making the other thing.
My only objection to animal products is that the animals are often kept in filthy, inhumane conditions, and sometimes killed in needlessly painful ways.
Well, breeding and killing animals for their fur is not stupid because it’s playing into human created fashion in order to make money.
I have very strong abjections to this. Too strong to find words for it. Barbaric is a far too soft expression.
well i dont think that a guy sould be able to tie a dog to a bumper and drive 20 miles. but i do think mink and leather is fasionable and if ppl want to spend that kind of money on it they can. but i dont like these ppl who refuse to buy leather because of the “poor animals” but love to have shirts that were made by kids in thailand working there fingers bloody for .07 and hour and say they dont care and they dont have to. might i also mention these are the ppl who recycle and were against the war because they were afraid ppl in iraq would die. lol
Towel2,
Much better followup than your first post. You’re learning quickly. One thing, though, the last line was kind of an unnecessary jab and some folks look down at that. We’re looking for factual, (or theoretical, theological, etc) debate. If those are your opinions, start a different OP dedicated to the connection between recycling and the anti-war movement 
Lissa,
Honestly, most companies don’t because that has a tendency of creating adverse reactions to the animal (eg, slaughterhouses make the deaths of cows as painless as possible to keep the meat from tensing before death.) It’s not necessairly for the animals sake, but for good business.
Aldebaran,
I’d agree with you, except for the fact that fashion design is a legitimate business and its use of matereals could not and should not (IMHO) be limited by sentiment. Animal furs are some of the best matereals for warmth. Even if its a luxury item with no true utilitarian use, who’s to say that the individual should be prevented from wearing it because it’s ‘barberic?’
Oy. That sounds like a bad ripoff of a George Carlin routine. Really bad. And in fact, I know few people who care about animal rights and not about human rights abuses like the ones you’re talking about.
Hahaha. Yeah, because nobody in Iraq died during the war. (Wha?) I don’t see the connection with recycling either.
it want a bad ripp off a george carlin bit, and i was talking about civilians. yet george carlin is one of my heros. and i think he has influenced me in a lot of ways.
it want a bad ripp off a george carlin bit, and i was talking about civilians. yet george carlin is one of my heros. and i think he has influenced me in a lot of ways. i was talking about hippies!!!
Of course fashion design is a legitimate business (I should say it is art) but still it isn’t legitimate from a morally point of view to breed and kill animals especially for this.
The same for those who want to wear this because of the pure luxury. There is no moral ground for this. And there are synthetic furs who look as real and can be used for this purpose.
Animals don’t serve to be sacrificed to the human arrogance, greed and unhealthy desire to show off. Animals are living beings like we are. We have no right whatsoever on them or over them.
But yes, “real” animal fur is among the best materials for warmth, and rightfully used as such by people who live in areas of realy extreme weather conditions.
The fur used for this comes as far as I know not from the type of animals I refered to.
Salaam. A
i say we are higher on the evoulutionary ladder therfore we sould be more important. tell me when was the last time u saw a group of lions protesting the unfair treatment of animals. when its feeding time i dont think u will be spraying red paint all over a zebra right as that predator is going to make its kill. its the natural order of things.
I strongly disagree with that.
We have no power over anything or anyone. And who says we are higher on the evolutionary ladder, more important and the smartest species? I don’t think so. If we were, we could control all animals on the globe.
It is also not the natural order of things to keep other species in cages in order to kill, just for the fun of it.
That alone makes us lower then all the rest.
That is the difference between humans in so called “developped” countries and humans who hunt and kill for food (and clothing and other necessary things to survive). And animals who do just the same.
To be completely unnatural in your behaviour and reasoning is not a sign of being on top of the evolutionary pyramid.
Salaam. A
They can’t. Why is this relevant?
We can reason and make choices that most animals cannot. A lion isn’t worried about the feelings of the zebra, and has little capacity to alter its eating habits. I think by this logic, people could still be eating each other and you could say it was the natural order of things. I mean, it certainly did happen on a larger scale than it does now, and nobody was complaining about the unfairness of it. 
What I like about people is that we don’t HAVE to do the simple, often cruel things nature dictates. So I think the “natural order” stuff is mostly irrelevant.
Alright, I hate to be the jerk to mention it, but towel2, yore pea sea kneads a spell chequer. I normally don’t say anything, but you rather type like a zebra yourself.
Aldebaran, we are higher in the evolutionary chain in the sense that we are the only animal that can reason, the only animal for whom the very concept of ethics means anything at all, the only animal capable of significantly modifying the natural environment to suit us rather than the opposite as is the case for every othere species. Saying that we are lower than other animals because we keep some of them in cages does not make sense: no other animal knows how to even make a cage. If lions could keep zebras in cages so that they could kill them when it suited them rather than going without food for days on end, they would, but they can’t.
There is a widespread tendency to anthropomorphise animals which is deleterious to holding a rational debate on this type of topic. On the other hand, it must be recognised that this is for many people a highly emotive subject, to the extent that this can be the primary consideration.
But animals (I’m using this as a blanket term for everything from a virus to a dolphin, excluding humans) are NOT moral beings. It doesn’t make sense to apply human ethics to anything that they do, and conversely to overdo the “natural order of things” when explaining our behaviour because to a great extent, we transcend the “natural order of things”. Although I suppose that for us to transcend the natural order of things is in the natural oder of things… I propose that we should substitute the expression “the natural order of OTHER things”. Anyway, I digress. To the matter at hand.
As far as I’m concerned, animals, like trees, are renewable natural ressources. The word “renewable” is important here. Whales, elephants, cod, bunny rabbits can all be exploited in a sustainable way. The problem is when greed and commercial interests take hold of the process, and we start killing more than can be replaced. Which is partly why we invented agriculture. The only reason for the very existence of domestic cattle, sheep, goats, chickens or rabbits is that they are in effect genetically-modified organisms developped to service our needs in meat, milk, eggs, wool, fur, leather and fertilisers.
Animals specifically reared for leather or fur, or any particular by-product are a slightly different matter, but the breeding of sable of mink for fur for instance, has no impact whatsoever on the wild populations of the aforementioned creatures. Except of course when a bunch of idiots from IFAW go and set them loose in the wild and they go and trash the ecosystem…
That just about covers the logic of it, the ethical dimension is much more subjective. I personally am perfectly happy with this use of animals. I have a serious problem with overhunting, overgrazing, overfelling, overfishing, essentially anything that makes the whole process unsustainable. It is often just due to short-term greed, and is ultimately self-defeating.
Now many people simply don’t like the idea of killing animals, which is fine. The problem is their tendency to try and force this view on others, which is an infringement of people’s liberties, not least of those whose livelihood depends on animals. You only have to look at the effect that banning the seal fur trade had on Inuit populations.
I’m going to stop before this becomes a straightforward rant. So to answer the question, we shouldn’t stop making leather and shit, we should just do it responsibly. Animals aren’t ethical beings but we are, and we therefore have a responsability to not screw the natural world over, and to reduce suffering, bearing in mind that animal and human suffering are not morally equivalent. If it’s a choice between the Tutsi guerrillas and highland gorillas in Rwanda, then it’s a shame, but the latter will have to take care of themselves.
This is why this is never a debate. Either you pre-suppose animal rights in order to prove them or you don’t. Tell me, what rights does the mosquito on your arm have, or the misc. varmint nibbling at your garden? Where are the cries of outrage for the tapeworms?