Leather is one of the most efficient, natural and renewable resource, a unique and highly versatile material which contributes to the quality of everyday life and has done so for centuries. Due to its resilience, comfort and beauty, leather has played an important role since the beginning of times in satisfying man's clothing and decorative needs. Technically speaking, leather is a fundamental output of the leather tanning industry. Tanneries recover the hides and skins that are discarded by-products of the food industry producing meat for human consumption and convert them into leather, a stable material with a wide range of applications in downstream sectors of the consumer goods industry. Footwear, garment, furniture, automotive and leather goods industries are the most important outlets for EU tanners’ production. More specifically, the footwear Directive provides a definition of “leather”, which reserves the use of the word and its synonyms to products resulting from the processing of animal remains that retain the natural structure of the fibres undamaged.