Is Lambskin Traceability Shear Genius?

Alexandra Harrell
·5 min read

Traceability has quickly become a cornerstone of the industry’s sustainability efforts. And for good reason: the ability to track and trace every element used to make a garment—from “farm to finish line,” if you will—has a myriad of benefits, the most relevant being that having the most up-to-date data readily available is a reasonable and fair way to hold the industry accountable.

And while traceability efforts have primarily focused on fibers—predominately cotton—one company is broadening that scope to include a whole different animal: animals.

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Security Matters’ (SMX) technology has successfully demonstrated the full end-to-end traceability of lambskin.

That patented technology uses a hidden, invisible chemical-based “barcode” designed to permanently “remember” any object—be it a solid, liquid or gas. That invisible barcode on the material or product item is decoded using the company’s “reader” to access the corresponding data, which is recorded and protected using blockchain technology.

“This is a cutting-edge technology because the ‘memory’ is embedded into the skin itself,” Zeren Browne, chief strategic officer and board member at SMX, told Sourcing Journal. “It also verifies where the lambskin came from: did it come from an ESG certified farm, was the animal was looked after in a proper way, was it ethically sourced, was it treated in a facility adhering to high environmental standards—it really certifies for consumers that standards are being met along the way.”

This technology is of particular interest to fashion—particularly the leather industry—as it’s fraught with ethical sourcing, animal welfare and environmental impact concerns. Not to mention, traditional leather traceability methods typically employed are physical markers—like stamps or tags—and a (quite literal) paper trail documenting the animal’s journey. This, SMX alleged, can lead to the potential for fraud, given the lack of real-time data.

“With the tannery, when the tannery gets the skin, it’s very raw. It’s dirty and you’ve got everything on it. And the thing is, you don’t really know what the quality of that skin is and where it comes from because once that little tag comes off—the traditional way to tag an animal, the plastic tag—you wash the skin and take that tag off, and the traceability is gone,” Browne said. “And then there’s a lot of comingling; I buy 20 skins from farm A and 50 skins from farm B, but the drum takes 500 skins, I’m going to comingle skins from 10 different farms in one batch. So, whose skin is whose?”

The Melbourne-based business said its technology addresses these challenges “head on” by embedding that barcode into the skin. Each piece of lambskin is given a digital identity that records its journey, including the farm of origin, processing details and suppliers involved.

“It helps the tannery as well because they can scan the skin and sort it out after they wash it,” Browne said. “The other thing is quality control; if there was something wrong with the product at the end of the day, you’re able to go all the way back to which farm it came from, or which tannery did the process—you’re able to problem-solve and reward the good actors along the way.”

But animal enthusiasts aren’t necessarily convinced that traceability equates with ethics.

“Traceability is no guarantee that lambs weren’t stabbed in the throat or skinned alive—it just means you know where they came from,” Tracey Reiman, executive vice president of PETA, said. “PETA has witnessed mutilation and other abuse on every farm using ‘humane’ or ‘responsible’ labels that we’ve visited around the globe, and we’d like to remind everyone that the only way to ensure no living, feeling being was tormented and killed for fashion is to shop exclusively for vegan materials.”

And PJ Smith, fashion policy director at the Humane Society of the United States, said the nonprofit has long documented the slaughter of lambs and cannot imagine any brand wanting to be associated with such a cruel industry using buzzwords like traceability when the alleged traceability is largely misleading.

“The fur trade has long tried to promote its industry with buzzwords like ‘transparent’ and ‘sustainable’ without realizing that the least sustainable product is one that no one wants to buy, and transparency is only as good as the welfare standards and blind audits that are put in place,” he continued. “Most standards try to keep costs low while not damaging the pelt and audits are usually paid for by the industry, creating a massive conflict of interest.”

Fellow traceability company TrusTrace reiterated the general purpose and function of the tool.

“Traceability provides structured data as evidence of origin and material movement; it does not say much about how the product was made or the conditions around it. Traceability is the mandatory infrastructure to conduct proper risk analysis, based on that foundation it’s possible to conduct risk mitigation actions,” said Pauline God, policy manager at TrusTrace. “One way to safeguard against social, environmental or animal risks is to work with suppliers that are audited and certified and to continuously perform due diligence on the supply chain to ensure you can discover and manage risk.”

SMX declined to comment on what brands are utilizing its traceability technology, though it did confirm that a brand commissioned the project that tracked the journey of lambskin from farm to finished product.