Victory! Overstock.com Bans Badger Hair After PETA Push

For Immediate Release:
May 3, 2022

Contact:
Robin Goist 202-483-7382

After PETA shared with Overstock.com a badger-hair industry exposé showing badgers spinning in circles inside dirty cages before workers slit their throats, the locally based company just banned and removed all badger-hair products from its site. In thanks, Overstock.com will receive delicious vegan chocolates from PETA.

“On badger-hair farms, these animals are deprived of the opportunity to dig, forage for food, choose mates, or do anything else that would make their lives worthwhile,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “By scrubbing its site of badger-hair products and implementing this ban, Overstock.com is helping PETA protect badgers from abuse.”

PETA Asia’s investigation into the Chinese badger-hair industry revealed that badgers exhibit behavior patterns indicative of severe psychological distress, such as pacing back and forth. Many badgers suffered from untreated injuries, and one was even missing a leg. Slaughterhouse workers beat screaming badgers over the head with anything that they could find, including a chair leg, before slitting their throats. Other badgers are captured illegally using snares, even though they are a protected species.

Procter & Gamble, the parent company of The Art of Shaving, was the first company to ban badger-hair items after the release of PETA Asia’s video, and nearly 100 others have followed suit, including L’Oréal, Morphe, The New York Shaving Company, Beau Brummell, NARS, and Bonanza. Overstock.com’s ban on badger hair is the latest addition to its long list of animal-friendly bans—including on fur, mohair, angora, alpaca, and exotic skins.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.