Tasman Tanning Company chief executive Neville Dyer says the proposed EUDR change would reduce export compliance paperwork. Photo / Bevan Conley
By Monique Steele of RNZ
A European Commission proposal to exclude leather products from new anti-deforestation import regulations is being labelled as a “bit of a relief” by a readied leather producer, but “nonsense” by campaigners.
The European Union was working to reduce global deforestation in the production of commodities it sells, including beef, leather, wood, soya, rubber, palm oil and cocoa, in efforts to improve global biodiversity.
Incoming requirements under the new European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) would demand that New Zealand exporters prove, with due diligence documentation, that no forests were cut down to make those products.
However, despite a focus on agriculture as a major driver of global deforestation – particularly cattle farming – the European Commission announced this month it was proposing to exclude leather products from the scope of the regulation.
Proponents and opponents seemed to agree the proposal was a result of leather industry lobbying by producers in countries such as Brazil and Italy.
New Zealand’s Tasman Tanning Company is an end-to-end hides and skins processor with plants in its Whanganui home and in the South Island’s Timaru.
Its leathers were used predominantly in footwear, upholstery and aviation sectors with brands like Rockport, Blundstone and DeWalt, mostly in key markets including the United States, Europe and China.
Chief executive Neville Dyer said the proposed EUDR change would reduce its export compliance paperwork.
“Well, it’s a little bit of a relief,” he said.
“We were pretty well prepared for it, particularly our supply partners.
“They had done a lot of work for the export of the meat, and it related a lot to the meat processing and recording.”
The local meat industry invested in a nationwide project to map out deforested farmland for beef to help producers comply with the new system, saying less than 1% of beef-producing land in Aotearoa was deforested.
Dyer said it was well-positioned for the incoming system as it tracked batch processing and adhered to the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) system for transparency.
“We’ve got our own traceability system that runs through our hides processing, but the fact that we could relate it back to the NAIT tag was going to make it reasonably easy to transition to be compliant,” he said.
“However, it seems that some of the bigger players in the world have decided that it was too hard for them.
“So they have managed to lobby the European Commission, and that looks like it will be dropped for leather and associated products. So one less process in terms of compliance that we have to go through.”
The company employed just under 300 people across its two sites, handling up to 850,000 hides each year.
While the EUDR sought to target countries such as Brazil and Indonesia, New Zealand was considered a low-risk trading partner due to its strong livestock and forest traceability schemes and environmental farming practices.
Furthermore, increasing afforestation for carbon forestry was an issue causing concern for New Zealand farmers locally.
Mighty Earth is a global nature-focused advocacy organisation that supported the EUDR and its inclusion of leather.
Senior adviser Madrid-based Isabel Fernández Cruz told RNZ the organisation was surprised by the proposal, which she said was a result of “very aggressive” industry lobbying.
She said the commission’s own analysis showed that leather was a source of deforestation, and also a cost-effective way to reduce Europe’s deforestation footprint.
“The European Commission has made many assessments, and their own findings clearly say that leather should be kept in the regulation because of the benefits and the logic of having leather included if you have the beef,” she said.
“It’s totally nonsense, because it doesn’t make any sense.”
She said the regulation aimed to create a level playing field for companies.
“Producers like, as you mentioned, coming from New Zealand that are sourcing on a sustainable basis, and they have standards that are well documented.
“For them, they probably gain more access to the European Union market, because complying with the EUDR will make them more competitive.
“So in that sense, I think the EUDR is a big opportunity for those producers.”
Fernández Cruz said keeping leather in the scope would give consumers the guarantee they were asking for, that those products would be deforestation-free.
“In the end, also having the leather in the scope of the regulation will guarantee that product made out of that leather are also not coming from the deforested areas, and that’s also a big step for consumers.”
In its draft act report, the European Commission said excluding downstream leather products (or finished products) from the scope created a “fragmented and incoherent approach” for the leather sector.
“Considering the differentiation of the leather downstream value chain from the meat value chain, asymmetries in trade flows between meat and hides, and the relatively low economic value of cattle skins and hides compared to meat within the overall cattle production, economic operators in the Union have limited leverage to demand the information necessary to comply with Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 from their suppliers.”
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations said in 2021 that agricultural expansion drove 90% of global deforestation, with more than half of that due to the conversion of forest to cropland and just under half for livestock grazing.
It said in 2020, 178 million hectares of forest were lost worldwide in the three decades prior, with the highest annual net losses of forest area recorded in the decade in Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia.
Deforestation and peatland degradation also contributed roughly 13% of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to a 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
The environmental policy was estimated to reduce deforestation by about 8.09 million hectares, about the size of Austria, when it came into effect.
Since first entering into force in June 2023, the EUDR has been revised twice, easing requirements for those from lower-risk countries – including Aotearoa – as well as for small-time producers, who would face the requirements from June 2027, as opposed to December for the remainder.
The draft was open to public consultation until June 1 this year.
– RNZ