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L’Oréal Group is set to ditch animal hair brushes after pressure from the public and animal rights advocates.
Vegan charity PETA said it put pressure on Baxter of California (which is owned by the L’Oréal Group). In addition, almost 80,000 members of the public urged the company to drop animal hair too.
The French beauty company – the largest in the world – has agreed to ban all hair. This includes fur from badgers and goats among other animals.
Investigation
The move follows the release of a PETA Asia video exposé of China’s badger-brush industry. The charity says its footage grim conditions. These include farmers capturing or breeding badgers and ‘confining them to small wire cages on farms’.
It added: “At the end of their short, miserable lives, workers beat them. They slit their throats for brushes used for paint, make-up, or shaving.
Goat hair
The group has also released an exposé of the goat-hair industry of the goat hair industry.
PETA said its investigators uncovered ‘workers castrating goats, mutilating their ears, cutting off large swathes of their skin during shearing, and stitched up their wounds with a needle and thread – all without any painkillers’.
“Farmers admitted that after shearing, many goats die of exposure to the cold wind and rain. One worker said that in just one weekend, 40,000 goats had died of exposure,” said the charity.
Animal hair brushes
Yvonne Taylor is PETA Director of Corporate Projects. She said: “Every badger- or goat-hair brush represents a sensitive animal who endured a violent death.
“PETA is calling on retailers everywhere to follow L’Oréal Group’s compassionate example and embrace animal-free brushes that no one had to suffer and die for.”
L’Oréal Group joins almost 100 brands – including Procter & Gamble, Morphe, Cult Beauty, and NARS – in banning badger-hair brushes after talks with PETA and other advocates.
