Hypocrisy?
January 18th 2011 21:00
Photo by Parfois. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Is having leather goods incompatible with being a vegetarian? I had wanted to ask my vegetarian-but-leather-consum ing friends this but hadn’t thought up a way of delicately putting it. Finally, one of them just had a baby and was telling me how he and his vegetarian wife were going to let their son decide whether he wanted to be a vegetarian. It sounded noble enough. So I decided to put the question that was on my mind to him after I saw him plonk his Louis Vuitton wallet on the table while we were meeting up for coffee.
“I think you have to be sensible about how far you want to go in not harming another creature,” says my friend. “The reason why I still use leather is that I consider it a by-product of the meat industry. Yes, I am a Buddhist but I also have to be pragmatic. At the same time, I am trying to use as few leather goods as possible.”
That I can understand. I am trying to go down the same route. My reasons for not buying leather goods include:
- they are more expensive than “pleather” (imitation leather)
- even if they are a by-product, they still involve the killing of animals
- my previous purchases from Prada, Fendi, Longchamp et al have been sending me broke
Now that it’s summer, it’s far easier for me to cut down on my meat consumption by eating more salads. My all-time favourite is the pasta salad with roasted mushrooms and garlic dressing, available at my local supermarket. As animal liberationist Peter Singer said, vegetarian meals can be delicious.
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