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European retailers stop buying Indian leather: Peta

European retail giant Marks and Spencer is phasing out use of Indian leather under pressure from People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal rights group has said.

Peta said that they have been 'forced' to 're-launch' its campaign against Indian leather, suspended in May last year, as nothing has been done to improve the deplorable conditions in which animals are transported to slaughter houses.

Several other retailers too had stopped buying leather from India under its pressure, it claimed and estimated that its campaign cost the industry $1.26 billion in loss of exports in less than five months last year.

Peta said these retailers would not start buying the Indian leather unless government starts implementing the act against cruelty to animals and things improve.

The animal rights group has been holding demonstrations outside retail outlets of the companies it believes are buying from countries where animals are mistreated.

The group claims it has shot undercover videos in West Bengal, Maharashtra and Karnataka which show animals in overloaded conditions in lorries and being killed in view of each other with dull blades.

Marks and Spencer, it says, joins other international retailers including Gap Inc, J Crew, Clarks and Florsheim who have quit buying from India. Also joining the boycott are high-scale Nordstrom and Wolverine, makers of Hush Puppies as well as Caterpillar brand and world-renowned Harley Davidson footwear.

The Indian government, Peta says, has only itself to blame for 'failing' to take the action 'demanded and begged' of it, through 'pressure and polite appeals', from all over the world since 1999, a failure that 'threatens to eventually cripple the country's skins trade'.

Peta alleges that cows, calves, bullocks, buffaloes and other animals are still being transported illegally in suffocating conditions, suffering wounds and smothering to death as the lorries carrying them bribe their way past state checkpoints and drivers careen at breakneck speeds, throwing the animals to the floor to be crushed and gored.

"Despite pleas from animal welfare groups, the Dalai Lama and American movie stars like Pamela Anderson, thousands of cattle in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka are still being forced to walk for days to their deaths," it said.

When they collapse, they are beaten and have their tails broken at each joint. At slaughter houses like in Bangalore and Calcutta municipal abattoirs, animals are dragged to the kill floors, sometimes by children, have their throats hacked at with blunt blades in full view of each other and are skinned for leather bags and shoes, even while still alive, it alleged.

Peta said last May it had agreed to put its campaign against Indian leather on hold for one year in order to allow the Council for Leather Exports a chance to persuade the government to compel the enforcement of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and to get its own traders to refuse to buy from abattoirs which reward cruel transport practices and slaughter barbarically.

In April, Peta warned Indian officials that it would be 'forced to re-launch' its campaign if improvements were not made.

Since that time, Peta has been in talks with 37 American, Australian and European animal protection organisations angry about India's inaction.

Peta president Ingrid Newkirk said: "One cannot buy Indian leather without taking part in the immense suffering of these soulful animals. The criminal abuse of cattle, sheep and other animals cannot be accepted as the cost of doing business in Gandhi's country. We honoured the minister of commerce's request to end antagonism. However, for one solid year, all the government did was sleep. Now a serious wake-up call is in order."

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