NEW DELHI, MAY 8: The international animals rights organisation, People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, has laid its challenge against the barbaric slaughter of cows in India at the door of the Council for Leather Exports (CLE), the apex body of the leather industry in India. After dumping shoes outside the Indian consulate in San Francisco, flooding Indian embassies abroad with mail and succeeding in getting three major US chain stores to cancel orders of leather goods from India, PETA has now warned the CLE to ``clean up, not cover up'' its act. India, being the second biggest leather exporter in the world, it is a bit difficult to swallow, as the CLE claims, that a major source of the leather is from old cows that have died a natural death. PETA has petitioned CLE chairman, M Mohammed Hashim, that it put the full facts about cow slaughter on the table. In a point-by-point rebuttal of the CLE's claims that the leather industry in India is dependent on animals killed primarily for their meat, PETA argues that it defies "belief that even "a minor portion of it comes from the serendipitous process of waiting for cattle to die natural deaths, one here, one there". In a letter to Hashim, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk has asked Hashim to ensure that slaughterhouses be required to help stop intensely cruel transportation of animals. PETA is also demanding that the leather trade in India set up a cattle transportation conference to find ways to stop the illegal shipping of animals that causes them distress, injury and death. PETA would help the leather industry find a way out of the transportation hurdle, Newkirk offered in her letter, sent late last week. The PETA had also written to Union Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran saying such cruel treatment of animals had "shocked Western consumers who are now boycotting leather and other products from India". For the sake of its cattle, the image of India in the "eyes of Western consumers", and for its meat and leather industries, PETA has asked the Commerce Minister to press for the enforcement of India's existing cattle protection laws. Other animal rights groups like Compassion in World Farming (CWF) have also taken up the cause. A recent film beamed on BBC World, showing in graphic detail the treatment meted out to cattle on the way to the slaughterhouses, has drawn hundreds of protest letters to the Indian High Commission in London. The fact is that the one-million member strong, PETA has found wide support for animal rights causes in the West after its high-profile campaign against the use of animal fur and skins for clothing. Using Hollywood celebrities and sports stars in the fight against fur, resulted in a global rejection of even fur lookalikes and imitation skins, let alone the real thing. In the case of leather and leather goods, it is a virtually impossible task to stop the trade in animal hides and leather. Too many lives in too many impoverished less developed countries depend on the trade. PETA wants the leather industry in India to ensure that animals taken for slaughter are treated in a human way, and are killed in a manner that causes them the least pain. "Our goal is only to stop suffering", writes Newkirk, urging the leather trade to stop buying leather from municipal slaughterhouses until they adopt at least minimum humane standards.
