The Regulatory Frontline: Beating the EUDR Deadline

The leather and hide industry is facing a pivotal moment, as addressed at the LHCA’s Spring Meeting. Three critical battles, regulatory compliance, the supply of accurate sustainability data and traceability, are happening at once, demanding coordinated action from every stakeholder in the supply chain.

This briefing outlines where we stand, what is at stake, and the steps LHCA is taking on your behalf.

The Regulatory Frontline: Battling the EUDR

The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) remains the industry's most pressing geopolitical threat. As currently written, it imposes geolocation-based traceability requirements that are effectively impossible to meet for non-EU supply chains while simultaneously offering simplified rules for domestic EU suppliers. This structural imbalance risks creating a captive European market that could devastate our tanners by driving up the cost of local raw materials while depressing global hide and leather prices.

What LHCA Is Doing About It

LHCA is working shoulder to shoulder with COTANCE, the European leather industry federation, aggressively lobbying the European Commission to remove hides and leather entirely from the regulation's scope (Annex I) via a delegated act. The Commission's proposals are expected by the end of April, and we are pressing hard to ensure our industry's voice shapes the outcome.

The core argument is straightforward. Hides account for a tiny fraction of an animal's economic value, historically around 1%, and today even less. Hides and leather drive zero deforestation. Including them in the EUDR is scientifically indefensible and economically damaging and we are making that case forcefully to European policymakers.

The Data War: Reclaiming Our Sustainability Narrative

For too long, our industry has allowed others to grade our homework using biased mathematics. Metrics like the Higg Materials Sustainability Index (MSI) have artificially elevated the perceived sustainability of synthetic alternatives — petroleum-based materials that displace genuine biological byproducts — while penalising natural leather. Dr. Sarah Klopatek, Global Chief Livestock Scientist at JBS, spoke at the LHCA Spring Meeting. Her work is helping dismantle these flawed frameworks and establish a factual foundation for how our industry's environmental performance should be measured.

Key Findings

Current carbon accounting methodologies fail to distinguish between new carbon released from fossil fuels and carbon cycling within natural biological systems. This creates a significant blind spot that misrepresents leather's true environmental profile.

Grasslands, maintained and protected in large part by ranching operations, hold approximately 34% of the world's terrestrial carbon. This vast carbon sink is invisible in standard emissions-focused accounting frameworks.

LHCA is committed to ensuring that sustainability assessments of leather are grounded in complete, accurate science — not methodologies designed by or for competing industries. Reclaiming this narrative is essential to our long-term market access and commercial viability.

Traceability: From Compliance Burden to Commercial Asset

Traceability is rapidly evolving from a regulatory checkbox into a fundamental requirement for accessing premium markets. Leading global brands are making supply chain transparency a non-negotiable condition of doing business and our members are feeling that pressure.

What Our Members Are Telling Us

Nine in ten LHCA members surveyed identified brand requirements, not regulatory mandates, as the primary driver of their traceability investment. The most significant obstacles are supplier data gaps and the operational complexity of integrating traceability systems across existing workflows. LHCA is actively working to develop solutions that fit with how our industry actually operates.

The Path Forward: A New Industry Standard

A new CEN (European Committee for Standardisation) standard has been developed to give the industry a clear, tiered framework for traceability compliance and claims. Vanessa Brain is leading LHCA's engagement. The standard operates across three levels: Level 1 covers tracking to the packer; Level 2 is tailored for EUDR compliance; and Level 3 supports advanced sustainability claims.

A Note to Stakeholders

These three fronts — regulatory, scientific, and operational — are deeply interconnected. The outcome of the EUDR fight will shape the commercial environment for hides and leather globally. The quality of our sustainability data will determine whether we can defend our markets against synthetic alternatives. And the robustness of our traceability infrastructure will dictate our access to the brands and retailers driving premium demand.

LHCA is engaged on all three. We will continue to keep the industry informed as developments unfold, and we welcome your input, your data and your advocacy as we fight for this industry's future.