PETA Exposé Takes You Inside the Badger-Hair Farm Industry

Did one of these badgers suffer for your makeup brush? Unless you’re using makeup, paint, and shaving brushes made from synthetic materials only, you’ll never know who may have died for the bristles. That’s why an eyewitness went inside eight badger-hair farms in China and documented what the brush industry doesn’t want you to see. Watch now:

The exposé footage shows a worker terrorizing badgers. Trapped inside a tiny wire cage, one badger can do nothing but thrash as a worker wielding metal tongs clamps down around their back. Then, the worker beats, stabs, and cuts the badger to death so that their fur can be taken, normally used in badger-hair brushes.

Inside every badger-hair factory farm that an eyewitness visited, they found badgers confined to tiny, filthy wire cages, in which all the animals could do is pace constantly, chew on the wires of the cage, and dig frantically at the floor.

Several badgers were missing fur from their pelts and had visible wounds and dried blood on their skin.

The eyewitness recorded that a worker hit, stabbed, and cut open a badger who struggled and endured the pain for more than three minutes before dying.

After viewing the footage, a wildlife veterinarian confirmed that the animal “certainly felt severe pain throughout the slaughter process.”

Not Isolated Suffering: A PETA Eyewitness Has Documented the Abuse of Badgers for Years
PETA was the first to expose the badger-hair industry nearly a decade ago and led many companies to make the compassionate decision to ban badger hair. An eyewitness revealed that “protected” badgers were illegally captured using snare traps and that others were bred and confined in tiny cages on farms before workers killed them with whatever was handy. The eyewitness even caught one worker bludgeoning a badger with a chair leg.

Who Are Badgers?
Badgers are extremely social animals who, in nature, spend much of their lives with their family, known as a “clan.” They construct and live inside elaborate underground burrow systems called setts. Much like human homes, setts are made up of separate “rooms,” including a space in which to sleep, an area for giving birth, and designated “bathroom” spots outside. Some setts are centuries old and passed down to offspring, so generations of badgers are raised within the same walls.

But 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, causing many to go insane—continually pacing back and forth and spinning in circles inside their cages.

There’s No Such Thing as an Ethical Badger-Hair Brush
No matter if you’re painting, putting on makeup, or shaving, make sure you’re not responsible for a badger’s pain. Anytime you shop for brushes, check the label for badger hair or other animal-derived materials and urge these companies to stop profiting from the abuse and slaughter of badgers for their hair.