Holding a bag dripping with “blood,” actor Karishma Tanna – star of the hit Netflix series Scoop – is encouraging fans to spare the lives of more than 1.4 billion cows, sheep, and goats and millions of other animals slaughtered every year for leather by choosing fashionable, vegan options in a new campaign for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India (PETA India).
Leading fashion photographer Sasha Jairam shot the campaign, while Tanna’s outfit was styled by Namita Alexander and her hair by Shefali Koley. Her make-up was done by Rishina Acharya.
“I used to wear leather jackets and bags until two years ago, but working with PETA India, I began to consider how every leather handbag represents a life of suffering and a painful death for cows and other thinking, feeling animals used for their skins,” says Tanna. “I’m happy to share that I have stopped buying leather and have been giving away the ones I own for a good cause and urge my fans to do the same. PETA India accepts donations of leather items to use in demonstrations against leather.”
Animals used for leather in India are often crammed into vehicles in such large numbers that many become severely injured or die en route. They are then dragged into slaughterhouses, where they are cut open in full view of one another on floors covered with faeces, blood, guts, and urine.
Leather production also wreaks havoc on the environment. Turning animals’ skins into leather requires massive amounts of toxic chemicals, and runoff from leather tanneries poisons local waterways. Leather production is also harmful for those who live near and work in tanneries. In Bangladesh’s leather tanning area, 90% of leather tannery workers die before the age of 50.
Luxurious synthetic vegan leathers are widely available, and nowadays leather is also made from pineapple leaves, cork, fruit waste, recycled plastics, mushrooms, mulberry leaves, teak leaves, discarded temple flowers, coconut waste, tomato composite, and more. Animal-free leathers are also good for Indian farmers, as the state of Meghalaya has shown by considering pineapple leather production.
PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
