China’s desire for endless youth is wiping out donkeys – can scientists help?

Scientists in Brazil are working on a lab-grown donkey collagen that might save the animals from being wiped out worldwide. Their goal is to meet the Chinese middle class’ insatiable demand for ejiao – a traditional Chinese medicine with purported anti-ageing benefits that is derived from donkey skins – while also offering a purer product that poses less risk of contamination. Carla Molento, a professor of animal welfare at the Federal University of Parana and head of its Cellular Animal Science Laboratory, is spearheading the project. The veterinarian said her team was working towards “a novel system ready for scale production” of donkey hide gelatin in a bid to curb the species’ rapid decline. “We are hoping to offer a donkey collagen product which retains all the qualities of the conventional one, as it will be encoded by the same DNA,” she said. “Except that we will be able to ensure its purity, as none of the contamination such as heavy metals and disease risks like pathogens exist in the new production system.” She said the production was based on precision fermentation, where a microorganism like yeast worked as a fabric that donkey collagen DNA could be inserted into, creating a protein identical to that produced by donkeys. While the team anticipates the technology could be ready by the end of 2027 with additional investment, they continue to study donkeys to refine their product. “Our hope is that by the end of 2027 we will have the technology ready for large-scale production, by which I mean the production of a powder donkey collagen ready for different types of final product,” Molento said. “So it will be more of a business-to-business commerce, where the industry of different ejiao presentations may benefit as best for each business. “There is a lot we need to learn about the donkey collagen types, as there are different breeds of donkeys and more information on how their collagen compares is required. “We are open to partnerships, as we are highly motivated to help supply pure donkey collagen without all the difficulties related to the donkey skin trade.” Ejiao has more than 2,000 years of history and was documented in the oldest Chinese pharmacopoeia, the Divine Farmer’s Classic of Materia Medica. Today, scientists continue to study its effects, which could include promoting collagen and elastin synthesis, reducing wrinkle formation and improving bone density. Historically, its production was extremely limited because it was made by boiling black donkey hides from China’s eastern Shandong province with water drawn from a specific well there. But China’s rapid economic growth has fuelled an exponential surge in demand for the once-luxury tonic, depleting domestic donkey supplies and driving imports from the Global South, according to a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Asian Medicine in March. “Bluntly put, almost the entire global donkey population risks being shipped to China and turned into medicinal jelly within the next decade or two,” two historians of Chinese medicine and science, Natalie Kohle and Gregory Clancey, wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Asian Medicine in March. They noted that this growth in demand had also required the ejiao industry to drop its requirements for certain donkeys and water, adding that donkeys’ relatively slow pace of breeding – their pregnancies last around 12 months and they rarely give birth to more than one foal at a time – meant supply could not keep up with the ejiao industry’s pace. “At an annual demand of 4.8 million donkey hides and an estimated global donkey population of 53 million, the contemporary volume of ejiao production and import of donkey hides to China have a disastrous impact on global donkey numbers, the livelihood of those who depend on donkeys as work animals and entire economies in Africa,” they wrote. In 2024, the African Union imposed a 15-year ban on the donkey skin trade, followed by a ban on slaughtering donkeys in Brazil in April that effectively closed the country’s last major donkey slaughterhouse. Emily Reeves, a strategic adviser at UK-based animal welfare charity The Donkey Sanctuary, said the “extractive and opportunistic” practice of moving sourcing from country to country was now unsustainable with the bans and declining donkey populations. Brazil’s donkey population plummeted by 94 per cent from 1,300,000 in 1996 to 78,000 in 2025, according to The Donkey Sanctuary, though researchers have argued that this was mostly due to the mechanisation of agriculture, not ejiao. “The trade is a ticking time bomb for disease spread risk because animals are sourced and moved, often illegally, without oversight or traceability,” she said, referring to horse flu, swamp fever, African horse sickness, as well as zoonotic diseases such as glanders. “Large herds are gathered from a multitude of locations. Animal mistreatment and stress increase susceptibility to disease. Skins are usually treated minimally, either by wet salting or sun drying, and can carry these pathogens when shipped.” This illicit trade was underscored in October when Hong Kong customs seized 150 tonnes of smuggled donkey skins, which were declared as frozen food and destined for Taiwan, as part of a HK$200 million (US$25.5 million) bust. Despite China being the traditional and largest market for ejiao, worth billions of US dollars, consumer awareness of what actually goes into making it remains low. A survey in January of 1,000 Chinese adults, around two-thirds of whom had previously consumed ejiao, found that 46 per cent of them did not identify donkey skin as a source ingredient, and 70 per cent were unaware of the concerns surrounding its production, including animal welfare, environmental impact and potential links to wildlife trafficking. The survey was conducted by London-based market research company Kantar and commissioned by The Donkey Sanctuary. Still, it found high acceptance for ejiao produced using cellular agriculture, with 76 per cent of respondents saying they would likely use artificial ejiao if it were affordable. This willingness was greatest among the youngest and oldest consumer groups who value innovative, safer and ethical production. Reeves from The Donkey Sanctuary said the ejiao industry and biotechnology companies were best placed to navigate public policy, regulatory systems and product marketing for lab-produced gelatin. “We encourage action on these fronts so that a cellular agriculture solution has the potential to progress from a technical possibility to a practical reality,” she said.

China’s desire for endless youth is wiping out donkeys – can scientists help?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Brazilian researchers are developing a lab-grown alternative to ejiao, a traditional medicine made from donkey skin

Brazilian researchers are developing a lab-grown alternative to ejiao, a traditional medicine made from donkey skin