I enjoyed reading this thread. I'm just getting into proper shaving and I'm enjoying the animal smell my new badger brush has. I don't have a great deal of time for animal rights people and am slightly ashamed to say I occasionally mess with them. A vegan girl was once telling me how cruel it is to drink milk because the calves need it. I told her that if you kill and eat the calf then the milk is going spare and then it's ok. She wasn't impressed. After watching a couple of episodes of whale wars I'm sorry to say I went to the supermarket and bought a pack of whale meat. Not endangered whale meat, just regular whale meat.