Caswell-Massey Bans Badger-Hair Items After PETA Exposé

New Jersey Company Joins Chorus of Those Opposed to Trapping and Violently Killing Badgers for Shaving Brushes

For Immediate Release:
October 8, 2018

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

After PETA shared a horrifying video exposé of China’s badger-brush industry with Caswell-Massey, the Edison-based personal-care company banned badger-hair items, and the company’s CEO stated, “[Our] products are being continuously reformulated to remove animal ingredients, because I believe in it and our customers appreciate it.” PETA Asia’s eyewitness investigation revealed that in order to make brushes used for shaving, makeup, and paint, badgers are captured using snares and other cruel methods while others are bred and confined to small wire cages on farms before being violently killed.

On Chinese badger-hair farms, PETA Asia documented that workers beat crying badgers over the head with anything that they could find, including a chair leg, before slitting their throats. One animal continued to move for a full minute after his throat had been cut, and another was missing a foot, which the farm owner attributed to a fight with a badger caged nearby.

“Badgers’ lives aren’t expendable, and these animals shouldn’t be killed to make expendable goods,” says PETA Director of Corporate Affairs Anne Brainard. “PETA applauds Caswell-Massey for its compassionate decision, which will prevent badgers from going insane inside tiny cages and being beaten to death in a horrendous industry that’s thankfully losing customers quickly.”

Badgers are extremely social animals who, in nature, construct elaborate underground burrow systems, some of which are centuries old and have been inhabited by many generations of the same badger clan. They are fastidious and have separate rooms for sleeping and giving birth as well as designated outside “bathroom” areas.

Cruelty-free synthetic shaving brushes are readily available online and in department stores. Caswell-Massey’s products are sold online, including at Jet.com and Overstock.com, and in over 100 stores nationwide, including Anthropologie.

Procter & Gamble, the parent company of The Art of Shaving, was the first company to ban badger hair after the release of PETA’s video, and numerous others have followed suit, including Olivina Men, Penhaligon’s London, The New York Shaving Company, Beau Brummell, and Bonanza. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—is now calling on Baxter of California and Dick Blick Art Materials to follow suit.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.