Last Monday, the California Supreme Court banned future sales of a particular soccer shoe (or boot as it is known in soccer circles). The shoe is made by adidas, and is called the Predator. Some of its models feature kangaroo leather from Australia. The California ruling bans the sale of derivative products that come from three specific breeds of Australian kangaroo: the Eastern Gray, the Western Gray, and the Red. Despite the ruling, Australia had already removed the three breeds from their endangered species list.
In the past, the Predator had been endorsed by global soccer icon, David Beckham; however, after pressure from Viva!, an animal rights group in England last year, he decided to wear a synthetic leather version of the product.
“The issue around the footwear is long running. The Predator boot was invented in 1993 by Craig Johnston, an Australian who played for Liverpool. He improvised prototypes with rubber from table tennis bats on the outside.
The boot enables the good player to apply bias to the ball the way a table tennis player does. And when adidas developed the product, Beckham became the obvious marketing man. Bend It Like Beckham grew into a trendy item that costs close to $200 a pair, or 10 times the cost of a cheap pair of soccer shoes.
Johnston had nothing to do with the culling of kangaroos for his boot. He had sold the patent and moved on. Beckham spent countless hours in the adidas wind tunnel, helping to tweak the design and to select the soft leather “feel” that top pros go for. But in early 2006, hounded by the British animal welfare group Vegetarians International Voice for Animals, or Viva!, and ironically with time on his hands because of a broken bone in his foot, Beckham was shown film of kangaroos being shot, baby kangaroos being cut from the pouch and bludgeoned to death in the Outback allegedly to provide the material for the sportswear.
His name sells the kangaroo Predator, his feet do not run in them.” (1)
Frederick Douglass never wore kangaroo leather shoes, or any other type of product that involved protected species. The only thing endangered for young Frederick were his own feet. In this excerpt, he described the monthly ration of food, along with the yearly allowance for clothing:
“Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received their monthly allowance of food, and their yearly clothing. The men and women slaves received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes; the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars. The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the old women having the care of them. The children unable to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year. When these failed them, they went naked until the next allowance-day. Children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of the year.”
Source: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Chapter II.
Reference
(1) Beckham tries to sidestep the boot controversy, International Herald Tribune, 24 July 2007, by Rob Hughes.
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