Shell Cordovan comes from...?

[Nicola]



I think it's more of a supply issue. It's faster/easier to raise 'em the current way and you can do it on less land. More cows, more industrialized setting = lower price and more cow for more people. In terms of efficiency and land usage, sure, grass fed is best (actually literally the most effective use of certain land types, even over growing crops) but you can't satisfy current demand levels that way.

To the best of my knowledge corn fed is mostly a North American thing.

 

[fljarg]

There are members here, such as Ron Rider, who are in a much better position to answer this. However, from my understanding, all horse hides come from France, where killing horses for meat is still legal. In countries such as the US, it isn't. Horsehides, then, then are a by product of the horse meat trade. This isn't to say that it's incidental though. Obviously, if a producer can get extra profit from a horse's skin, it affects his economic decisions and pricing strategies, which in turn affects consumers' purchasing habits. In simple terms, if people didn't buy horse leather, horse meat would probably be more expensive, which in turn means less people would buy it.
I say this only because there's often this conception bandied about that horse hides and deer bones are just "by-products," and no animal was killed solely for these reasons. Obviously, no animal has been, but that doesn't mean they're not factored into the production and consumption processes.
Horse leather from France is then bought up by tanneries in Chicago, Japan, and Argentina, where it's then turned into shell cordovan.

IMHO

I believe that horse hide are by nature a byproduct of the horse meet and as such I would like to provide some numbers I find googling around (main source ISSN 1668-1940)

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China, Mexico and Argentina were by far the biggest producer of horse meet, and as such of horse by products

I can’t said much about China and Mexico but I did find information about the industry in general in Argentina

About 200000 horses per year and 55000 tons of horse meet export to Europe (2006) data.

Main buyers: France, Holland, Italy, Russia and Japan

I read somewhere the stat about byproduct also, but I couldn’t find the document again, some kind of analysis of the industry and export of Argentina horses.

Fanny taking into consideration as the report said “How come so many horses are available? Although Argentina does not slaughter animals raised for that purpose,...”


My guess will be that much of the shell exported from EU does not necessarily came from france but much of the hide is purchase raw and process.