Sam Setter's 'Pills': I’m BACK

Mmmm last month I gave you the good news that I would stop publishing The Pill, but please sit tight as here is the bad news: for the moment The Pill will continue…..

Apparently the Government of Ethiopia will reinstate a tax or completely prohibit the export of raw hides and skins in order to guarantee the supply to local tanneries, who clearly couldn’t compete against foreign buyers. Despite the tens of millions of dollars spent by tax payers, mostly from Europe, to create a strategy for the development of the Ethiopian leather industry, in the end there is no strategy. On top of this, recently, an Ethiopian website Birrmetrics posted an article https://birrmetrics.com/how-policy-missteps-are-crippling-ethiopias-leather-industry/. Birrmetrics is a business magazine in Ethiopia. There is some bias as the article is written based on information given by government officials from LIDI, the Leather Industry Development Institute, but the economic data about exports in Africa as well as the dire circumstances of Ethiopian tanneries are correct. This means, like with the internal evaluation report of UNIDO, the LIDI stakeholders who were closely engaged in the UNIDO development project are criticising the same project. As you know I have approached the Director General of UNIDO several times with the findings of the UNIDO project and he has not bothered to answer me. Back in 1999 UNIDO threatened me with legal action after my column Limeblast criticised the UN about their position during and after the genocide in Rwanda, but when I answered that I would applaud such an action as all issues would become public, the threat was withdrawn.

The leather industry is having a very tough time, like several other industries in a world of uncertainty. I recently read an article about the exponential growth of the number of leather (bag) shops in the centre of Florence, considered the heart of leather bag sales in Europe, if not the world. Shops run and owned by Chinese or Bangladeshi citizens, offering leather bags made in China and Bangladesh, but with minimal final assembly in Italy in order to allow the “Made in Italy” label, are taking over from the original shops owned by Italians who are unable to beat the competition. These shops obviously target the millions of tourists who know nothing about leather and cannot judge neither the quality of the leather nor the quality of the stitching. All that counts is a trip souvenir that is leather, cheap and packed in a bag which has written on it “Florence Italy”.

The EU has stepped back from the outlawing of combustion engines for private transport – originally considered indispensable. The withdrawal was of course supported by important undiscussable technical studies, the cost of electrical cars, and the inferior travel distance capacity, just to name a few. Most of all the automobile industry demonstrated technically and through political pressure that this conversion from combustion engines to electrical engines was mainly an ideological and political discussion point, even if most (thinking) people don’t deny that climate change is a regretful reality and that pollution control is a must. The same lawmakers travel of course first or business class and in private planes, like the numerous so-called “famous” artists and sportspersons, which doesn’t bother them. However, you and I, traveling in our combustion engine car or our commercial travel by air, offend their holier than thou principles! The leather industry has zero political influence in Brussels in spite of the huge efforts made mainly by COTANCE, UNIC and other national leather industry associations (absent the certification organisations) and hence I wonder if at long last we can unite and pressure, like the car industry, the EU Commission to delete the leather industry from the EUDR with the scientific data at our disposal. Accepting the weakening and not the deleting of the EU requirements towards the leather industry is admitting that the leather industry is somehow involved in the deforestation processes, which is blatantly untrue.

Sam Setter