Penhaligon's -> hypocrites?

[xgunterx]

From the FAQ on their site:

Do any of your products contain any animal by-products? Some of our fragrance and toiletries range do contain animal by-products. However, we are working to eradicate this in exchange for vegetarian alternatives.
...
Do you use badger hair in our shaving brushes? Yes we do as this is by far the most superior fibre for applying shaving lubricants. However, as a part of gaining our warrant status we have proven to the Royal Warrant Holders Association (who re-issued our warrant in 2006), that our shaving brush supplier only purchases from ethical badger farms in a part of the world where badgers are not endangered and are in fact primarily farmed for their meat.

Some sarcasm:
Yes, we are excluding tallow in our products because it would be unethical to kill cattle just for the fat around the kidney and throw the rest of the carcass and meat away which is of no use for anybody.

 

[Aevum]

i sincirly doubt penhaligon makes their own brushes, they probobly get them from edwin jagger or simpson, but it is somewhat simillar, and to some degree it is hypocracy,

actually, tallow was probobly exctracted from cows protected by EU and UK laws regarding animal health and treatment, while most of todays badger hair comes from farms in china where theres little regulation how animals are breed, feed and treated, food for thought, will consider it when im using my silvertip shavemac next time i shave

 

[Gustav]

So why can they not replace regular tallow with ethical tallow? There's bound to be producers of organic beef who could supply the shave soap manufacturers with such a product. Furthermore, some producers replace tallow with palm oil products which are known to come from amongst others Borneo's palm plantations which are expanding daily into what little natural rain forest is left. Given the choice between contributing to deforestation or putting a by-product from a controversial industry to good use, I would choose tallow any day.

 

[xgunterx]

8<
actually, tallow was probobly exctracted from cows protected by EU and UK laws regarding animal health and treatment, while most of todays badger hair comes from farms in china where theres little regulation how animals are breed, feed and treated, food for thought, will consider it when im using my silvertip shavemac next time i shave

I saw a docu once about badger farms in China. You really don't want to know or see how badgers were skinned alive.
But using tallow from a humanely killed cow for meat must be some kind of evil thing to do apparently.
"But hey, we got a renewal of our Royal Warrant so who cares if we're hypocrites to keep the shine up."
If it weren't for their excellent colognes I would give them both my middle fingers for what they did to their shaving soap. But now I'm a hypocrite. Damn.

 

[richmondesi]

i sincirly doubt penhaligon makes their own brushes, they probobly get them from edwin jagger or simpson, but it is somewhat simillar, and to some degree it is hypocracy,

actually, tallow was probobly exctracted from cows protected by EU and UK laws regarding animal health and treatment, while most of todays badger hair comes from farms in china where theres little regulation how animals are breed, feed and treated, food for thought, will consider it when im using my silvertip shavemac next time i shave

They don't actually "make" their soap either though

 

[Stubblefield]

From the FAQ on their site:


Some sarcasm:
Yes, we are excluding tallow in our products because it would be unethical to kill cattle just for the fat around the kidney and throw the rest of the carcass and meat away which is of no use for anybody.

As an aficionado of sarcasm I can state that your comment is excellent.

Ethical Badger Farm--now that is an oxymoron.

 

[proxymoron]

Maybe they're trying to keep the synth-brush vegan market for premium shave creams alive?

 

[Aevum]

so, do we dump our badgers and go to the Men-U synthetic ?

 

[T_M]

This just occurred to me...has anyone ever looked into the timing of some of these re-formulations vs the mad cow issues that the UK and Europe had a few years ago? Obviously, they could have sourced their tallow from North or South America, but a scare like that could make anybody's company re-think the present and future sources of their raw materials.

Any before anybody brings it up, the tallow "cooking" process (or whatever it is) probably won't get rid of mad cow, because it's caused by a prion, not a virus or bacteria. It's not precisely "alive", so you can't really "kill" it.

Anyway, just thought I would toss that out there.

--------T_M

 

[xgunterx]

I doubt if the mad cow disease had a real weight in their decisions besides an extra excuse. (also for other companies who made the transition before Penhaligon's)

It has probably more to do with going to the lowest denominator, PR, supply and financial arguments.
Ask a big group of people what they think of ingredients from animals in cosmetic products and X% will say they don't mind at all, Y% doesn't care and Z% will be against it.
This question will automatically bring negative connotations to mind like animal testing, animals suffering, ... and everybody has seen pictures or docu's in the past about animals being locked up in small cages in labs to undergo sometimes horrifying tests.
Ask the same group how they feel about ingredients from plants and there will be a shift. Z will decrease and X and Y will rise.
And this question probably brings other more positive connotations like 'healthy', 'no harm', ...

There are more and more rules around animal products and it may became just easier to choose for ingredients of vegetable origin.
The supply may be bigger, cheaper and there is a real open market where hedging can be interesting to keep the costs stable.

But now that I think about it. There is no mentioning in their FAQ about animal testing. I wonder why?

 

[talibeard]

Any before anybody brings it up, the tallow "cooking" process (or whatever it is) probably won't get rid of mad cow, because it's caused by a prion, not a virus or bacteria.

AFAIK the prions were not to be found in fat tissue but just in the brains and spinal cord. Besides mad cow disease is from the 80-ies and the reformulations are much more recent. It has more to do with public view and the hype of the moment.

 

[T_M]

AFAIK the prions were not to be found in fat tissue but just in the brains and spinal cord. Besides mad cow disease is from the 80-ies and the reformulations are much more recent. It has more to do with public view and the hype of the moment.

I thought they had a flare-up a couple of years ago, or was that the US & Canada? Anyway, a lot of beef was taken off the shelves (especially ground beef) on the chance that there might have been some cross-contamination. It's a stretch, I know, but it just happened to cross my mind.

I'm sure that for the most part it's a combination of corporate image and cost. Probably if you look deep enough into their books the tallow raw material cost or processing cost or lead-time or storage cost or something makes it more expensive to use than a vegetable based product which they think gets them almost the same resulting product. When you add in the fact that it's currently more chic to be completely animal-free, they think it makes them even more profitable.

Before I knew to check here first, I once asked the saleslady at a Crabtree & Evelyn if their shaving soaps were tallow based. Well, she didn't know what that meant, so I explained what tallow was. She proudly stated that Crabtree & Evelyn used no animal based ingredients in their products. The best part was that she said it as I handed her back the large $85 EJ Best Badger brush to put back on the shelf . I'm sure for the C&E brushes they shave the badgers like they do sheep. I just hope they wear some gloves or something while they do it .

-------T_M

 

[warlandsboy]

Ethical Badger Farm--now that is an oxymoron.

LOL

I'm sure that for the most part it's a combination of corporate image and cost. Probably if you look deep enough into their books the tallow raw material cost or processing cost or lead-time or storage cost or something makes it more expensive to use than a vegetable based product which they think gets them almost the same resulting product. When you add in the fact that it's currently more chic to be completely animal-free, they think it makes them even more profitable.

Yeah, probably!

 

[Gustav]

Prions are proteins, if you cook them in lye for several hours, in order to make soap, they will most likely, not survive the treatment. In any case during the mad cow scare, people were worried about the remotely plausible ill effect of ingesting untreated tissues (raw brain or marrow) possibly containing prions. The chances of catching Creuzfeldt-Jacobs from this were apparently rather low. On this site we are discussing the chance on getting this disease by applying treated tallow soap lather on our faces and then leaving it there for a matter of, at the most, minutes before scraping in off with a razor. The plausibilty of being that unlucky must be extremely low to the point of being worthy of total disregard.

 

[trewornan]

Maybe they're not being hypocrites, maybe it just takes time to make changes and some have been easier than others? Finding demonstrably ethical sources of badger hair probably isn't easy. I don't care about killing animals for their fur, I just care that they're kept and killed in a humane way. Had I known I might be buying badger hair from an animal that had been skinned alive I wouldn't have bought any of my current badger brushes and I won't buy any more until I can be reasonably confident that's not the case.

Incidentally, I'm told the animal in the youtube video is not in fact a badger but if they're doing it to raccoon dogs (or whatever) you've got to wonder if they're doing the same to other animals. I just cannot understand why people would do something so unnecessary.

 

[Stubblefield]

so, do we dump our badgers and go to the Men-U synthetic ?

No, because the Edwin Jagger synthetic is much better.

 

[Stubblefield]

This just occurred to me...has anyone ever looked into the timing of some of these re-formulations vs the mad cow issues that the UK and Europe had a few years ago?

I had heard that EU Regs were going to require the use of medical grade tallow in cosmetic products, which is evidently more expensive. A cost cutting measure, I guess.