Adidas and Kangaroo Leather

I stumbled across this article recently while on Google, but before I clicked on the link all I could see was 'Stella McCartney, militant vegan, joins forces with Adidas...' and I was excited, because I know that Adidas carries some vegan gym and sports shoes, which are pretty hard to find. This could only be a good thing.

Imagine my surprise when I followed the link and saw the rest of the title: '...company that profits from bloody slaughter of kangaroos'.

I had absolutely no idea that Adidas used kangaroo leather, and no idea how kangaroos were 'harvested' for this leather. I'm shocked and pretty sickened.

This article is over a year old, so I checked the Adidas website to see if Stella McCartney was still partnered with Adidas, and sure enough she is. It appears that she is designing a line of clothing and shoes for Adidas, and I am 100% sure that she will use entirely synthetic fabrics within her line, but the questions that the Daily Mail article raised are still valid (as much as I hate to agree with the Daily Mail on anything).

As such a staunch supporter of animal rights, how can she align with a company that supports such a horrific slaughter?

Or, on the other hand, should we be happy that she is bringing at least a measure of compassion to such a company? You have to start somewhere right?

The original point of this post was going to point out that Adidas carries a line of vegan training shoes, and on their website these shoes are clearly marked as 'vegan', which I thought was cool. Delving further into the website, I found many shoes that were also marked as 'K-leather'. After reading the Daily Mail article, I just can't get the images out of my head of baby kangaroos stomped to death or left for dead in the Australian outback.

Anyway, here is a head's up from PETA about where to find cruelty-free shoes in the meantime. And on ths ShoeBuy site, they have their vegan shoes specifically categorized for easy searching. They also ship internationally.