Hoo-roo to all that: Another US state moves to ban kangaroo leather
A bill that would ban the sale of kangaroo parts has been introduced in the US state of Oregon, taking aim at sports apparel manufacturers that use leather from the animals to make their products.
Soccer cleats are one of the only products made from kangaroo leather that are routinely sold in Oregon, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports.
The measure would affect Nike, which is based in Oregon and the state’s largest employer.
“It’s unconscionable that millions of native wild animals in Australia have been killed for the sake of high-end soccer cleats worn by a subset of elite soccer players,” Democratic Oregon senator Floyd Prozanski, who introduced the bill, said in a news release on Monday by animal rights groups.
The legislation might affect some the state’s shoe manufacturers, but “Oregon should be standing on the humane side of this issue”.
“There are other materials that can be used in making these high-end cleats.”
In the release, the Center for a Humane Economy, Animal Wellness Action and the Animal Wellness Foundation welcomed the move.
Nike did not respond to OPB’s request for comment, but the company told ESPN last month that it used kangaroo leather in a “small portion” of its soccer shoes and that it “works with leather suppliers that source animal skins from processors that use sound animal husbandry and humane treatment, whether farmed, domesticated, or wild managed”.
Oregon’s bill would make it a crime to buy, receive, sell, or commercially exchange “any product containing a part of a dead kangaroo”.
Lawmakers in Connecticut have introduced a similar bill this session. A federal ban on kangaroo products was proposed in the US House in 2021, but was not approved.
The ban on “k-leather” would not be without precedent: California enacted a ban on kangaroo-based products in the 1970s.
The commercial harvest of kangaroos in Australia is legal. More than 1.3 million kangaroos were killed for commercial purposes in the country in 2021, OPB reported, citing the Australia Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
The agency said that number represented less than one-third of the “sustainable quota”, which is the number it considers could be killed without putting the main kangaroo species at risk.
