I don't mean to ruffle a lot of feathers but I wonder how many people know what a chicken farm looks like. I live in a big hunting and farming area, I actually am friends with a woman who runs a chicken farm with her husband and the inlaws of one of my best friends own a cattle ranch. Really, there is nothing humane about the food we eat. Chicken farms have thousands of chickens housed together in coops with barely room to move and are kept alive basically for their eggs and for them to be fattened up to kill for food. The cattle ranches are nicer in that the have room to graze and mill around, but they're killed for meat to, of course. And these are the small family owned farms that raise their own organic items. These aren't the big industry farms where I'm sure conditions are worse.
It's also a big hunting area. I've eaten deer (venison), elk, rabbit, and turned down moose but know people who have eaten it. These animals are food as much as any other type of meat, but somehow it's become less politically correct to eat them eevn though they are not endangered or extinct.
I have no problem when people are vegan for ethical reasons, or refuse to eat red meat because they think it is unhealthy, but I get offended when people tell me I'm unethical for carrying a python bag when they are more than happy to carry a leather one.
While I realize that's my own emotions I feel the need to get that out there.
Yes, but whether we like it, or not (personally, I don't like it, so I don't eat them), cows and sheep would be killed for their meat, anyway (or killed as a 'waste product' of the meat industry), regardless of whether the skins were used, or not and they are not generally killed in a particularly cruel way, just to preserve their skins.
Whereas, most snakes (and other exotic skin and fur producing animals) are not killed primarily for their meat - they are killed primarily for their skins and they are killed in particularly cruel ways (including being skinned alive) to preserve them.
There are also laws surrounding the rearing and killing of animals farmed for their meat; totally inadequate ones, in most cases, of course (please check out the fur thread on the Wardrobe subforum for what happens to rabbits!
), but generally better than nothing. This is
not the case for animals that are reared for their skins.
Also, people who eat meat, dairy and/or eggs can choose free range. As far as I know, there is no such thing as free range exotics, or fur.
Therefore, to use most types of leather, but not exotics, or fur, is not hypocracy - it's logic.