Blick Art Materials Asked to Ban Badger-Hair Paint Brushes After Horrific Exposé

PETA Releases First-Ever Eyewitness Investigation Showing Badgers Are Violently Killed in China

For Immediate Release:
September 19, 2018

Contact:
Moira Colley 518-466-6815

Armed with a new PETA video exposé of China’s badger-brush industry—which reveals that “protected” badgers are illegally captured in the wild and others are bred and confined to small cages on farms before being violently killed—PETA is calling on Blick Art Materials to stop selling paint brushes made from the cruelly obtained hair. Procter & Gamble, the parent company of The Art of Shaving, immediately banned badger-hair shaving brushes after viewing the deeply disturbing footage.

PETA’s exposé is the first of its kind and encompasses Chinese badger-hair farms and live markets visited as recently as August. Animals on the farms were confined to tiny wire cages exposed to the elements, and the stressful conditions often led to injuries and severe psychological disorders. One was missing a foot, which the farm owner attributed to a fight with a badger caged nearby. Slaughterhouse workers were seen beating crying badgers over the head with anything they could find, including a chair leg, before slitting their throats. PETA documented that one animal continued to move for a full minute after his or her throat was cut.

“Gentle badgers were beaten, cut open, and left to die—for paint brushes and other replaceable items,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on Blick Art Materials to remove badger-hair brushes from its inventory and sell only cruelty-free art supplies that no animal had to suffer and die for.”

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.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—is also calling on The New York Shaving Company and Gents Barbershop and Spa (which has a direct connection to the investigated farms) to ban badger-hair brushes.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.