Are meat and leather production correlated?
One category of large animal leather tannage I inadvertently left out of the above discussion was horsehide, and its genetic relatives, mulehide, donkeyhide and camelhide. Horses are no longer killed in the U.S., but horse meat is still a staple for animal feed producers, and is an excellent, tasty, fairly low fat food for humans, too, where it is legally allowed. I’ve eaten horsemeat on a number of occasions, including as a sandwich, in the 1980’s, available from street carts in downtown Boston, on the way to Boston Red Sox games. It was very good, somewhat salty, and a bit sweeter, coaser in texture, and leaner than beef, altogether not unlike corned beef. Raw horsehide, like cowhide, consists of a lot of thick collagen fibers, and in certain areas, such as around the base of the tail, where shell cordovan is produced, it is possible to make leather from parts of the animal that are not, strictly, skin. Tissue with high levels
I’m a former shoemaker, shoe company executive, and shoe machinery company owner. Up until the mid-1980’s, about 70% of American footwear leather demand was for cowhide, with another 10% in calfskin, another 10% in pigskin (particularly Hushpuppies and suede footwear) and the remaining 10% in goatskin (for linings) and exotic leathers (snake, iguana, lizard, alligator, bird leathers and bullhide) for fancy shoes and boots. Most of these hides (except the exotic category) were tanned mechanically using the chrome tanning process, with a smaller number reserved for vegetable tanning including specialty purpose leathers for shoe soleing by oak tanning process, and yet a smaller number oil tanned (mostly, goat and sheepskins). Uphols
