Is it leather? Writes on LinkedIn: When was the last time you visited a Leather Farm? Sounds ridiculous, right? It conjures images of some strange farmland with skeleton cattle walking around with no hides, just meat and bones.

We in the industry know this is ridiculous, but it’s the exact bleak picture that activists try to paint for unknowing consumers to steer them away from buying real leather.

PETA has morphed its animal cruelty crusade to include leather (no doubt in favor of Big Oil financial incentives) and is steadfastly misinforming consumers that cattle are raised and killed for their leather. Here is a direct quote from the PETA website: “𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙮𝙚𝙖𝙧, 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙡𝙤𝙗𝙖𝙡 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙮 𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣 𝙖 𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙡𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙨𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙝𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙨.”

No mention of the meat that is used to feed the needs of more than 80 percent of the world’s meat-eating population. No mention that leather is a by-product of the meat industry and that its use is one of the most sustainable actions people can take to help fully utilize all the resources nature provides us. PETA’s myopic view of the world is so distorted, self-centered, and out of touch with reality that they don’t even realize that driving people away from using leather is catastrophic for the environment and actually promotes the needless killing millions of animals through the habitat-shattering process of extracting oil from the earth to make plastic fake leather alternatives.

You can’t cure crazy. But you CAN refute it. And no matter how ridiculous the thought of a Leather Farm seems to you, we need to keep pounding away on the key message that no cattle are ever killed for their leather. Because to the common consumer – a leather farm can easily become their reality if that’s all they hear.