Nike, the world's largest maker of athletic shoes, said yesterday it is adopting a policy that prohibits the use of leather from cattle raised in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. The announcement came after a Greenpeace statement released about a month ago citing cattle farming as the main driver as deforestation in the region, and a significant contributor to global warming, as ranchers clear vast stretches of land for grazing. The company
established a formal Amazon leather policy and
will give its leather suppliers until the first day of next July to
"create an ongoing, traceable and transparent system to provide credible assurances that leather used for Nike products is from cattle raised outside of the Amazon Biome" [AP].
Nike's Web site says that it has "a high degree of certainty" that it doesn't currently use leather sourced from Amazonia. Still, the company wants to make sure this is the case due ...
