Beauty Brand Bans Badger Hair After PETA Exposé

Morphe Joins Chorus of Those Opposed to Violently Killing Badgers for Makeup Brushes

For Immediate Release:
October 14, 2019

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

After PETA shared a horrifying video exposé of China’s badger-brush industry with Morphe, the beauty brand—which is known for its professional yet affordable brushes and its collaborations with influencers like James Charles and Jeffree Star—banned badger hair. In thanks, PETA sent the company a box of delicious vegan chocolates.

PETA Asia’s investigation revealed that in order to make makeup, paint, and shaving brushes, 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, many animals exhibit behavior patterns indicative of a severe psychological disorder, and on one farm, a badger was missing a leg. Slaughterhouse 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.

“Every badger-hair brush represents the miserable death of a sensitive animal,” says PETA Senior Director of Corporate Affairs Anne Brainard. “By joining PETA’s list of retailers that don’t sell badger hair, Morphe will help prevent badgers from going insane inside cramped cages and being beaten to death for makeup brushes.”

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.

Procter & Gamble, the parent company of The Art of Shaving, was the first company to ban badger-hair items after the release of PETA’s video, and nearly 90 others have followed suit, including Olivina Men, 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,” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—is now calling on Blick Art Materials to do the same.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.