Viral quilted 'Tabby' bags in Coach's Regent Street store, London. Earthsight’s investigation reveals the brand’s leather supply chain is exposed to illegal deforestation and violations of Indigenous land rights in the Brazilian Amazon © Earthsight
24 June 2025
The report, titled The hidden price of luxury: What Europe’s designer handbags are costing the Amazon rainforest, is available here.
"Consumers of luxury products expect the high-price tags to offer some assurances that they are not contributing to deforestation or the theft of Indigenous lands. This investigation shows that this trust is misplaced."- Rafael Pieroni, Earthsight’s Latin America team lead
Prestigious fashion houses are buying leather from firms with supply chain links to illegal cattle ranches in the most deforested part of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, where climate talks are due to start in November.
Investigative non-profit group Earthsight analysed court rulings, satellite imagery, shipment records and went undercover to connect the supply chain of American fashion house Coach to a giant Brazilian slaughterhouse with a record of buying thousands of cattle raised on illegally deforested land.1
Nearly all recent Amazon loss in Brazil is driven by cattle ranching, often illegal. The worst hit state is Pará, where an area almost twice the size of Portugal has been burned over the last two decades. Brazil has pledged to end all deforestation in the country by 2030 and chose Pará to host international climate talks, the first COP to be held in a rainforest region.
Almost all the leather exported from Pará to Europe goes to Italy, including hides from the suspect slaughterhouse.2 Much of this flows to two tanneries in the Veneto region, Conceria Cristina and Faeda, where it is processed and rebranded as Italian leather. Earthsight undercover investigators were told by a Conceria Cristina representative that a regular buyer of their Brazilian leather is Coach.
Earthsight’s investigation should embarrass Coach, which has refocused its marketing on Gen Z, an unusually selective and environmentally conscious consumer segment. Known for its ‘accessible’ luxury leather bags that retail for between €300 and €600, sales skyrocketed by a reported 332 percent last year, with some of the strongest growth in Europe. “Our European market is on fire,” Coach CEO Todd Kahn told Vogue Business in February, with leather goods leading the way. Coach did not respond to Earthsight’s repeated requests for comment.
Other buyers from one or both of the Italian tanneries are Chanel, Chloé, Hugo Boss, LVMH's brands Fendi and Louis Vuitton, as well as Kering Group labels Balenciaga, Gucci, and Saint Laurent. All told Earthsight they do not use Brazilian leather, but Fendi and Hugo Boss have both launched investigations into Earthsight’s findings. Chanel revealed that it recently terminated its relationship with Faeda after losing faith in its traceability system. Chloé was the only brand to provide detailed leather tracing methodology to Earthsight. Faeda said it did not supply the fashion brands with Brazilian leather. Conceria Cristina did not respond to Earthsight requests for comment.
Coach, Fendi, Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss rely on a sustainability certification scheme called the Leather Working Group. It does not require tanneries to trace cattle to the ranches where they were raised, making the scheme blind to potential abuses at farm level. The group admitted in an email to Earthsight that its certification is not “a guarantee of deforestation-free status”. Tanneries can get “gold medal” level certification without tracing cattle even as far as slaughterhouses. Conceria Cristina and Faeda are both certified to the gold standard. Coach, Fendi, Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss plan to buy most or all their leather from certified tanneries, despite the known flaws.
Nowhere in Brazil have indigenous peoples suffered more deforestation than in Pará. The state’s Parakanã indigenous people have experienced decades of land invasions, with six armed attacks reported in the last six months alone. The slaughterhouse linked to Coach's supply chain is accused by federal prosecutors of purchasing cattle raised illegally in Parakanã territory.
The past few decades have seen Western consumer goods companies leave a trail of devastation across the world’s biomes and a string of failed commitments to clean up their supply chains. In recent years, policymakers have realised that relying on voluntary measures will do little to combat the climate and biodiversity crises, finally introducing laws obliging companies to act.
Europeans will soon be shielded from deforestation by the EU Deforestation Regulation that requires companies to prove that leather and other commodities they use are ‘deforestation-free’. The law should already be in force but was postponed to 30 December 2025 after intense lobbying. This “dangerous” delay gives the leather sector more time to continue lobbying for its exclusion, Earthsight said. Italian tanneries lobbied for an exclusion in the European Parliament earlier this month.
The Environment Act 2021 aims to stop UK imports of commodities produced on illegally deforested land. The law still requires secondary legislation and is not yet in force. A recent proposal contains serious loopholes, Earthsight said.
ENDS
Notes
Earthsight is a UK-based non-profit organisation that uses in-depth investigations to expose environmental and social crime, injustice and the links to global consumption.
The report, titled The hidden price of luxury: What Europe’s designer handbags are costing the Amazon rainforest, is available under embargo here. Once the embargo lifts, it will be published here: www.earthsight.org.uk/news/hidden-price-luxury
Company responses are available here.
Images of the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory are available for media use with a photo credit to the Federal Prosecutor's Office (MPF).
1 It is not unusual for cattle in Brazil to be moved from ranches on illegally deforested land to legal ranches before being sold to slaughterhouses, concealing their true origin. Frigol is one of Brazil’s five largest meatpackers, with a slaughtering capacity of 2,400 cattle per day across its facilities in Pará state. The Federal Prosecutor's Office is currently suing 33 ranchers and two companies, alleging that 47,200 cattle were illegally raised in the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory in Pará, home of the Parakanã people. Earthsight was able to confirm that 14 of the ranchers being sued by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office sold over 17,000 heads of cattle to Frigol in recent years, enough to produce 425 tonnes of hides. Due to differing investigation periods, Earthsight could not determine how many Apyterewa-origin cattle may have been among the 17,000. Other cases are more clear cut. Last year, the government fined Frigol and others for buying 18,000 cattle raised on illegally cleared Amazon forest in Pará and Amazonas states. Earthsight obtained the government’s case files in order to confirm that Frigol had purchased 3,643 cattle illegally raised on two areas of deforested land where cattle ranching has been banned. The company was fined the equivalent of approximately €280,000. Despite this, Frigol has continued to buy thousands of cattle from just one of the farms under forest protection orders. Earthsight analysed satellite images to establish that this forest has not been permitted to recover. Another NGO recently exposed that one ranch supplying Frigol with thousands of cattle had purchased cows from seven illegal farms in Apyterewa. Its response to Earthsight’s investigation is available here. Brazil is the world’s third biggest exporter of raw hides and Italy is its third largest customer.
2 The Brazilian tannery Durlicouros is Pará’s biggest leather exporter to Europe. Durlicouros confirmed in writing that it buys hides from Frigol. Examining shipping records, Earthsight established that the tannery controlled 90 percent of all hides sold from Pará to Italy between 2020 and 2023, amounting to 14,726 tonnes. The volume of Frigol’s supply to Durlicouros is not public and both firms failed to clarify when asked by Earthsight.
Contacts
Researcher/Campaigner – Latin America, Lara Shirra White: larashirrawhite@earthsight.org.uk
Latin America Team Lead, Rafael Pieroni: rafaelpieroni@earthsight.org.uk
Communications consultant, Jack Hunter: jack@fthe.fr
Earthsight's press email: press@earthsight.org.uk
