Leather industry’s divided opinion on Modern Meadow
22/06/2018
On the one hand, it has attracted criticism for using, frequently if not always, the term ‘leather’ to help it describe Zoa, which it makes using DNA editing tools to engineer specialised collagen-producing yeast cells. These cells are optimised to manufacture the type and quantity of collagen required. Once purified, the collagen can be formulated and assembled into Zoa, a material that the New Jersey-based company insists brands will be able to use to make finished consumer products.
Andras Forgacs’ recent reference to ending “a compromise between quality and sustainability” also implies that using biofabricated materials to replace leather in consumer products would make sense from an environmental point of view. But this ignores the fact that the best tanners in the world are operating at close to zero waste now and have an immense contribution to make to the circular economy. It also does nothing to answer questions about what the world would do with the hundreds of millions of hides and skins that tanners turn into leather every year.
Where would that raw material go? Who would pay to dispose of it? If the tanning industry disappeared, how long would it take for us to become conscious of the need to ‘reinvent’ it, and how long would it be before companies in the ‘reinvented’ tanning industry could justifiably argue that they deserved inclusion among the World Economic Forum’s technology pioneers?
On the other hand, commentators, including Nicoline van Enter, founder of footwear innovation and education platform The Footwearists, have pointed out that, whatever language Modern Meadow uses to describe Zoa, it’s a material that requires tanning and, therefore, one in which the tanning industry should be taking a keen interest.
In the John Arthur Wilson memorial lecture at the 2018 ALCA convention, the chief executive of leather manufacturing group PrimeAsia, Jon Clark, said in forceful terms that the global leather industry must embrace the development of new materials without fear. However, he was equally adamant that developers of alternative materials must offer honesty and “straight talking” when talking about their innovations.
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