PETA's main arguments about the bearskin caps worn by the soldiers stationed outside Buckingham Palace are unsurprising: It says the Canadian black bears whose fur is used could suffer painful deaths by crossbow, and that mother bears with nursing cubs could be killed. But as the BBC reports, the animal rights group has added a new criticism—that the fur caps are wrong for financial reasons.
The cost of creating a cap jumped 30% in the span of a year due to "contractual arrangements," from £1,560 (about $2,040) apiece in 2022 to £2,040 (about $2,670) in 2023. Total expenditures on the caps over the last decade exceeded £1 million ($1.3 million). The figures emerged following a Freedom of Information request from animal welfare campaigners and has PETA issuing this message to the Ministry of Defence (MoD): "Stop wasting taxpayer pounds on caps made from slaughtered wildlife, and switch to faux fur today."
The MoD says it has looked into faux-fur options and is willing to continue to do so, but that all replacement materials evaluated so far have not passed five necessary tests related to "water absorption, penetration, appearance, drying rate, and compression." It reportedly takes one bear to make each bearskin cap; the MoD says bears are not "hunted to order," but are sourced from legal and licensed hunts from the regulated Canadian market. (PETA disputes that.) The AP reports that PETA has said a luxury fake fur maker is willing to give the MoD free faux bear fur for a decade. A 2022 poll reportedly found 75% of UK residents thought the real bearskins were a waste of taxpayer money. (More Buckingham Palace stories.)
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