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Comment by Arn_Thor | Hacker News Reader

Not “purely” as a byproduct. They are complementary industries. Without the leather trade, meat producers would have to pay to properly dispose of that byproduct.

I agree that would be wasteful, and I love quality leather products myself. But I recognize that the leather, meat and dairy lobbies all work towards the same goal of ever expanding the industry.

So I am always on the lookout for great vegan leather. If the demand market dries up, this will raise the cost of meat and dairy, which will give alternatives to those a better chance to thrive.

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I think you are mistaken.

If meat industry disappeared, I don't believe the leather industry would exist on any sort of comparable scale. People would not be raising cows and devoting fields to feed and the whole chain of events that goes into slaughting and animal for it's skin. Leather would be profoundly expensive.

The meat industry on the other hand would be largely unaffected if the leather industry disappeared. They just need to find something else to do with the skin, and they would over night.

To say they're complementary doesn't mean that they depend on each other to an equal degree.

I don't believe it would be easy to find a use for all that cow skin. Think of the enormous amounts. But even if they did find a use for it that doesn't cost them, it's not likely to be nearly as profitable as selling it as an input to the leather industry. (If there was a more profitable way to use cow skin we'd probably be doing that by now)

> They just need to find something else to do with the skin, and they would over night.

Not even. The skin would go into the same grinders as all of the "useless" parts of the animal and become whatever downstream products it becomes (dog food, protein additives for animal feed, etc)

Presumably they would earn less money for this than for leather, hence making it less profitable if only marginally.

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