Breaking Exposé: Conscious Badgers Beaten, Stabbed at Fur Farms

Shocking new eyewitness footage obtained by PETA from inside eight Chinese badger fur farms reveals that badgers are confined to tiny, filthy wire cages where the stressed animals pace constantly from side to side, chew the wires, and frantically dig at the floor. In the disturbing footage, available here, several badgers can be seen with missing hair, visible wounds, and dried blood on their skin, and a worker is captured beating and stabbing a conscious, struggling animal.

In the video, the worker uses a metal clamp to pull a badger from a cage by the skin of their back, then repeatedly strikes the animal with a piece of wood and the clamp. The badger writhes and groans for more than three minutes as the worker hits them, stabs them in the chest with a knife, and slices their body open. No attempt was made to ensure the animal was unconscious or properly stunned. After viewing the footage, a wildlife veterinarian confirmed that the animal “certainly felt severe pain throughout the slaughter process.”

“Hundreds of thousands of badgers are living in misery and dying in terror and agony on fur farms across China just so their hair can be made into brushes,” says PETA Asia President Jason Baker. “PETA urges everyone never to buy anything made from animals’ fur and calls on companies to get badger hair out of their products.”

China is the world’s leading exporter of badger hair, exporting over 66,000 kilograms in 2024. The hair is typically used to make makeup, shaving, and paint brushes, and the animals’ bodies are used for food and oil. Following PETA’s first investigation into badger fur farms in 2018, more than 100 brands stopped selling products made from badger hair.

In nature, badgers live with their families in elaborate underground homes that are passed down from one generation to another. They’re fastidiously clean and devoted to protecting each other and their babies.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow PETA Asia on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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