L’Oréal takes huge step in fighting animal cruelty

After PETA US and nearly 80,000 members of the public urged Baxter of California, which is owned by L’Oréal Group – the largest cosmetics and beauty company in the world – to ban badger-hair brushes, L’Oréal Group has agreed to ban all animal hair, including from badgers and goats.

“Sensitive animals suffer greatly and endure unimaginably violent deaths for every badger or goat-hair brush,” PETA senior outreach and partnerships manager, Emily Rice, said. “L’Oréal Group’s compassionate and clever decision is one step closer to kinder beauty and art industries that embrace synthetic brushes and don’t harm a hair on a badger’s head.”

A PETA Asia video exposé of China’s badger-brush industry revealed that badgers are captured from the wild or bred and confined to small wire cages on farms. They are then treated horrendously at the end of their lives. An exposé of the goat-hair industry also revealed extremely inhumane treatments.

L’Oréal Group is among the nearly 100 brands – including Procter & Gamble – that have banned badger-hair brushes after talks with PETA and its international affiliates. The group is now calling on other companies around the world to follow suit.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” – opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.au.