Did you know that the first garments in the Bible were made from animal skin? Seriously - after the fig leaves, God provides Adam and Eve with skins as clothes (for protection and warmth I' assuming). Unfortunately for the poor animals...
Now tanning the leather is quite the smelly process - always was and always will be I suppose - since the hides arrive stiff and (usually) salted at the tannery, where they are soaked to remove the preservative and then scoured and pounded to remove any excess flesh and fat. At this point also the skin would be scraped clean of any hair. In ancient times, the skins would then be soaked in urine or painted with alkaline lime and then putrefied in a salt solution for several months. Oh yukky! After this process, they would be pounded with dung - just read the rest for yourself on Wikipedia. I think that tanneries today have not lost much of the stink. I have lived down the road from one for five years, and can vouch for the fact that when the wind came from the wrong direction you rather fled the house....
Now thinking of tanning and leather products, one can argue the fact that poor animals are used from awful conditions to give us mink coats and other fur, where PETA will lead the way for animal rights. The main objections are about the fur trade, since environmental matters as well as slaughtering practices gave rise to outcries. My honest opinion is that humans were meant to rule over the animals, but not exploit them, so I'm torn between support for PETA and very much for fur and leather. I think there are ethical issues that we need to consider, but I'm not going to discuss them here. Having grown up in an environment where you would hunt for meat and use almost every single bit of flesh (and hide) for usage, I can understand that people would be up in arms if animals are bred to provide fur and kept in cages that are way too small.
I suppose there is a difference between fur and hide (leather), but when considering the wear one can get out of real leather shoes or the horrible PVC stuff, I'd rather wear something for a long time and get what my money is worth, rather than paying less, but having to replace things in a much shorter period of time. With fur it is slightly different, because no matter how the fur was treated, eventually the hair will fall off.
What I'm rally trying to say is that all things can be used in moderation.
