Animal-derived materials such as fur, leather, wool, and silk remain widely used in the global fashion industry. Although precise global statistics are difficult to obtain, it is estimated that billions of animals are exploited or killed each year through textile production when leather, wool, fur, down, and silk are considered together (1).
Because animal agriculture and clothing production are closely interconnected, animals used for fashion are often counted alongside those used for food. This obscures the scale of their use for non-essential purposes and makes their suffering largely invisible to consumers.
Understanding how these materials are produced allows us to make more informed, sustainable and ethical choices.
Fur
The fur industry is one of the most widely criticised uses of animals in fashion, though it is seeing a resurgence with many influencers promoting it as a ‘”sustainable” fabric.
Contrary to popular belief, most commercial fur comes not from wild trapping alone, but from animals raised in captivity on fur farms, including mink, foxes, and raccoon dogs (2)(3). Scientific reviews and regulatory assessments have concluded that current fur farming systems cannot meet the basic welfare needs of these animals, largely due to confinement in small wire cages that restrict movement and natural behaviour (4)(5).
Animals on fur farms frequently display signs of severe psychological distress, including stereotypic pacing and self-mutilation (6). They are typically killed at six to eight months of age using methods such as gassing or cervical dislocation (pulling the neck to sever the spine) in order to preserve fur quality.
Wild trapping is sometimes presented as a more ethical alternative. However, trapped animals often die slowly from blood loss, exposure, dehydration, or stress before traps are checked (7). Some indigenous communities depend on fur, especially in the global north. In consumer societies, however, farmed and trapped fur production involve significant suffering for the sake of luxury status items rather than for any real necessity.
Leather
Leather is often described as a by-product of the meat industry, but it functions more accurately as a co-product. The sale of animal hides contributes significant revenue to livestock production and supports the overall economic viability of cattle farming (8)(9).
From an animal welfare perspective, leather cannot be separated from how cattle are raised and killed for beef and veal. Most cattle used for leather come from industrial beef systems and are therefore inextricably linked to them. These systems commonly involve early maternal separation, long-distance transport, confinement in feedlots, and restricted movement prior to slaughter (10)(11)(12).
At slaughterhouses, cattle are typically stunned using captive-bolt devices before having their throats cut. Although stunning is intended to render animals unconscious, welfare audits and scientific assessments have documented instances of ineffective stunning, leading to animals regaining consciousness during processing (13)(14).
Research has also documented the slaughter of pregnant cattle, resulting in the deaths of unborn calves (15)(16). While prevalence varies by region, this practice highlights the ethical complexity of leather as part of animal production systems rather than a harmless use of a byproduct.
Framing leather as “making use of a waste product” obscures its role in sustaining demand for cattle farming. Purchasing leather contributes financially to systems involving breeding, confinement, transport, and slaughter.
For many people, objecting to meat consumption on ethical grounds leads naturally to reconsidering leather for the same reasons: Both require the exploitation and slaughter of sentient beings (17).
Wool
Wool production does not require immediate slaughter, but it still raises serious welfare concerns, and usually does lead to the deaths of the animals being exploited.
Defenders of wool are keen to point out that sheep need to be sheared for their comfort, and while this is true, this argument conspiciously leaves out the fact that sheep bred for wool have been genetically selected to produce excessive fleece, which requires frequent shearing and human intervention. This creates intentional dependence on management systems that prioritise productivity over wellbeing (1)(18).
Common practices in wool systems include tail docking, castration, and intensive shearing. In some regions, mulesing (the surgical removal of skin near the tail to reduce parasite risk) remains legally permitted and causes significant pain (19).
Shearers are often paid by volume of fleece rather than hourly, encouraging high-speed processing that increases the risk of injury, for both animals and the workers themselves. Investigations have documented frequent cuts, exposure-related deaths, and inadequate veterinary treatment (20).
When wool production declines, sheep are typically sent to slaughter. Lambs born into these systems are also commonly killed at young ages for meat, unless they too join the production line.
Silk
Silk is produced from the cocoons of silkworms. In conventional silk production, cocoons are boiled or steamed before the moth can emerge, killing the pupae inside (21).
Producing one kilogram of silk can require the deaths of several thousand silkworms. While concern for invertebrate suffering is often limited, research shows that many invertebrates exhibit nociceptive and stress responses to harmful stimuli (22).
Silk production has also been linked to unsafe labour conditions and exploitation in some regions, adding human rights concerns to its ethical profile (23).
Environmental and Human Impacts
Animal-derived textiles impose significant environmental costs in addition to the significant welfare concerns, and the sustainability of these products is often vastly overstated.
Fur farming generates significant pollution through feed production, waste management, and chemical processing (24). Leather tanning involves chromium salts, acids, and solvents that contaminate water and soil and pose health risks to workers (25)(26).
Wool and silk production also require large inputs of land, water, and energy, while contributing to chemical runoff and greenhouse gas emissions (1)(18).
These impacts compound the ethical concerns surrounding animal use in clothing.
Why This Matters
Clothing is often perceived as ethically neutral, excluding the human rights issues like fast fashion and sweatshop labour. Yet many garments are directly linked to systems that confine, manipulate, and kill animals for non-essential purposes.
Modern plant-based and synthetic alternatives can provide warmth, durability, and comfort without involving animal exploitation. Most consumers who purchase animal-derived clothing do so without malicious intent, but rather due to lack of information.
Greater transparency allows individuals to align their purchasing habits with values of compassion, sustainability, and responsibility.
For many vegans and animal advocates, avoiding fur, leather, wool, and silk is an important step toward reducing participation in systems that treat animals as raw materials rather than sentient individuals. If you’d like to learn more about the available alternatives, you can do so here.
Bibliography
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Livestock’s Long Shadow. FAO, 2006.
https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm - European Commission. Scientific Opinion on the Welfare of Fur Animals. EFSA Journal, 2015.
https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4147 - Humane Society International. Fur Farms in Europe, 2019.
https://www.hsi.org/news-media/fur-farming-europe/ - European Food Safety Authority. The Welfare of Animals Kept for Fur Production, 2001.
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/182 - European Commission. Welfare of Farmed Mink and Foxes, 2007.
https://ec.europa.eu/food/system/files/2016-10/aw_platform_plat-conc_070707.pdf - Mason, G. et al. Stereotypic Behaviour in Captive Animals. Animal Behaviour, 2007.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347207001535 - Canadian Wildlife Federation. The Reality of Fur Trapping, 2018.
https://cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/research-papers/the-reality-of-fur-trapping.html - Steinfeld, H. et al. Livestock’s Long Shadow. FAO, 2006.
https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm - United Nations Environment Programme. Sustainability and the Leather Supply Chain, 2020.
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- Compassion in World Farming. The Life of Beef Cattle, 2021.
https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/7437467/the-life-of-beef-cattle.pdf - European Commission. Monitoring of Stunning Effectiveness, 2017.
https://food.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2017-12/aw_prac_slaughter_stunning_en.pdf - Gregory, N. Animal Welfare and Meat Science. CABI, 2004.
- Rydhmer, L. et al. Slaughter of Pregnant Cows. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica, 2019.
https://actavetscand.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13028-019-0458-0 - von Wenzlawowicz, M. et al. Animal Slaughter and Welfare. Springer, 2018.
- Singer, P. Animal Liberation. HarperCollins, 1975.
- Our World in Data. Environmental Impacts of Textiles, 2022.
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-of-textiles - Australian Veterinary Association. Mulesing and Sheep Welfare, 2019.
https://www.ava.com.au/policy-advocacy/policies/sheep/mulesing/ - Four Paws. Behind the Wool Industry, 2020.
https://www.four-paws.org/our-stories/publications-guides/behind-the-wool-industry - Rethink Priorities. Silk Production: Global Scale and Animal Welfare Issues.
https://rethinkpriorities.org/research-area/silk-production/ - Sneddon, L. et al. Do Invertebrates Feel Pain? Animal Sentience, 2014.
https://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss3/2/ - Human Rights Watch. Child Labour in Silk Production, 2015.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/11/30/child-labor-indias-silk-industry - European Environment Agency. Environmental Impact of Fur Farming, 2018.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/fur-farming-environment - United Nations Industrial Development Organization. Leather Processing and Pollution, 2019.
https://www.unido.org/resources/publications/leather-processing-and-pollution - World Health Organization. Chromium and Human Health, 2017.
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/chromium-in-drinking-water
“Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
–Rachel Carson, Marine Biologist