Ever wondered what goes into your favourite face cream? The next time you are tempted to dip into your student loan and indulge yourselves with ‘must-have’ cosmetics, you may want to check the label first, as it appears some anti-wrinkle creams on the market may contain more disturbing ingredients than could possibly be imagined.

A recent investigation has uncovered that a Peruvian gang have allegedly killed dozens of people and drained their bodies of fat to be used in cosmetics. The remains of the victims, found in shallow graves in the Peruvian jungle, were said to have been kidnapped and killed by a criminal gang for human fat trafficking. The liquid is said to be worth $15,000 per litre. Police believe the fat was sold on the black market to cosmetic companies in Europe, and later bought as anti-winkle creams.

Six of the gang members remain at large, and in addition to the five killings they have confessed to, police suspect dozens more, with a further 60 disappearances being linked to the case. The killers are believed to have targeted local farmers and peasants on remote roads in the Huanuco and Pasco regions, between the jungle and Andean peaks. Peru has understandably reacted with horror at the report that the gang enticed their victims with the promise of work, before butchering them, decapitating them and removing their limbs in order to extract the fat. One of those arrested told police the ringleader had been killing people for their fat for more than three decades. The gang has been referred to as the Pishtacos, after an ancient Peruvian legend of killers who attack people on lonely roads and murder them for their fat.

Medical experts said human fat had cosmetic components to keep the skin supple, but were sceptical about an international black market.

“It doesn’t make any sense, because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing to donate,” said Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia Medical School. The recent killings therefore seem all the more horrific, akin to organ harvesting in their brutality. To murder at will for fat that is already readily available to cosmetics companies and for such superficial gain goes beyond savagery.

We are talking human beings here, not whales, seals, or animals that are killed for their fur in the name of fashion. These deaths come as a tragic example of the lengths some would go to in order to cash in on the cosmetics trade, an enormously profitable industry in this day and age. This further demonstrates that there are clearly no depths of depravity the greedy and ruthless will not go to for commercial gain.

Is this development then testament to modern day vanity? It is arguable, but the simple fact remains that the price of a face cream somewhere out there on the market, came at the cost of an innocent life.