Leather production varies, I think. Some is a by-product of the meat industry, some is very bizarre, such as fetal animals that won't even be eaten or by-products of veal production. Then there's farmed alligator, crocodile, ostrich, snake ... and stolen pet cats (hello France!): MORE THAN 20,000 cats a year are being stolen in France, many ending up as babies' shoes or slippers. Animal lovers believe the rustling is the work of professionally organised gangs that work with almost complete impunity. Police say they have little time to devote to such a low-profile crime. It is feared some cats are being stolen to provide victims to train attack dogs or to amuse their sadistic owners. Others are taken for their fur. A raid on a tannery in Deux-Sevres, western France, discovered 1,500 skins, which were being used to make babies' shoes. Veering back to fur, there's commonly now domestic cat and dog fur actually masquerading as fake fur (thanks China!) on cheap fast fashion products and high-end gear. It's cheaper for the Chinese factory owners to round up cats and dogs and kill them (horrifically, usually skinned alive) than to produce actual fake fur. The Humane Society of the United States said it purchased coats from reputable outlets, such as upscale Nordstrom, with designer labels — Andrew Marc, Tommy Hilfiger, for example — and found them trimmed with fur from domestic dogs, even though the fur was advertised as fake. “It’s an industrywide deception,” said Kristin Leppert, the head of the Humane Society’s anti-fur campaign. The investigation began after the society got a tip from someone who bought a coat with trim labeled as faux fur that felt real. Leppert and her team began buying coats from popular retailers and then had the coats tested by mass spectrometry, which measures the mass and sequence of proteins. Of the 25 coats tested, 24 were mislabeled or misadvertised, the society said. Three coats — one from Tommy Hilfiger’s Web site ShopTommy.com, one from Nordstrom.com and one from Andrew Marc’s MARC New York line sold on Bluefly.com — contained fur from domesticated dogs. The others had fur from raccoon dogs — a canine species native to Asia — or, in one case, wolves. The single correctly labeled coat was trimmed with coyote fur, but it was advertised as fake. Most of the fur came from China. I think both these reports suggest that no bugger really knows what they have on their feet or their back unless they skinned/sythesized it themselves. It wouldn't surprise me if someone ran a scam to sell 'vegan' shoes made of cat parts at this point in time.