Governments are seeking to curb donkey skin exports to China, where demand for traditional medicine and other products is threatening animals that rural households need.
For years, Chinese companies and their contractors have been slaughtering millions of donkeys across Africa, coveting gelatin from the animals’ hides that is processed into traditional medicines, popular sweets and beauty products in China.
But a growing demand for the gelatin has decimated donkey populations at such alarming rates in African countries that governments are now moving to put a brake on the mostly unregulated trade.
The African Union, a body that encompasses the continent’s 55 states, adopted a continentwide ban on donkey skin exports this month in the hope that stocks will recover.
Rural households across Africa rely on donkeys for transportation and agriculture.
Yet donkeys only breed a foal every couple of years.
“A means of survival in Africa fuels the demand for luxury products from the middle class in China,” said Emmanuel Sarr, who heads the West Africa regional office of Brooke, a nongovernment organization based in London that works to protect donkeys and horses.
“This cannot continue.”
Jesus Christ, can the Chinese government just tell their people to fuck off with this shit. Bear bile, rhino horn, fucking donkey skin? This shit’s been proven to be 1000% bullshit clinically. Fucking ban it n crack down on it.
a lot of the violence toward animals in asia is based on superstition and old homeopathic medicine that doesn’t do anything. there are pretty significant cultural differences between the new/educated and the old/uneducated populations.
i’m hoping that this sort of thing is eventually phased out on its own. governments don’t want to do anything. in areas where it’s actually banned, people still do it. everything is small business, family business, back yards, wet markets etc. nothing is regulated.