Chinese health fad that’s decimating donkey populations worldwide
Said to prolong life, increase sex drive and maintain beauty, gelatin made from boiling donkey skins has seen an explosion in demand from China’s rising middle class, to the alarm of developing countries which depend on the beasts
On a bitingly cold November morning in northeast China, workers in blue boiler suits drag the bloodied skins of hundreds of slaughtered donkeys across a sprawling factory forecourt and leave them out to dry in the winter sunshine.
The rural backwater of Dong’e, in Shandong province, is the epicentre of a multibillion-dollar industry that is having a devastating effect on donkey numbers worldwide. Four million young animals – 2.2 million of them outside China – are being killed every year for their skins, which are boiled, liquefied and turned into health snacks, powders and face creams that the Chinese believe are the key to long life and lasting beauty.
Fuelled by an affluent new middle class and enthusiastically promoted by the government, the industry has halved China’s donkey population and is now threatening those on every continent, the animals being sought for the gelatin contained in their hides.
The value of a donkey within China has rocketed from 500 yuan a decade ago to 2,600 yuan (HK$2,910) today, as customers pay up to 2,000 yuan a month for an elixir called ejiao, which is sold on claims it preserves women’s beauty, improves blood circulation, boosts sex drive and makes workers indefatigable.
In Dong’e town, where more than 100 factories produce ejiao, we watch as hundreds of hides from South Africa are unloaded from a truck by forklift outside a factory. They are laid out and will be left to dry for up to 45 days before, as tradition dictates, being put in huge vats to be boiled down from December 21 until the end of the winter.
A by-product of the industry is a cluster of donkey restaurants in the centre of Dong’e. At one, a tethered young animal has a hood placed over its head. After being brought to its knees by the first blow, the donkey staggers back to its feet and tries to escape before more blows to the head fell it for a final time.
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