Si

A donkey skin sells in Kenya for $130. Boiled into a Chinese beauty product called ejiao, it becomes part of an $8 billion industry. Almost 6 million donkeys are killed every year to feed it. The finished products are sold on Amazon. Ejiao is a kind of gelatin made by simmering donkey skin for hours. It's mixed into face creams, anti-aging pills, candies, and tonics. Even China's own health regulator has admitted ejiao is just boiled donkey skin. No clinical trials show that it works. But a hit Chinese TV drama called Empress in the Palace put it back in fashion around 2012. The country's growing middle class started taking it for anemia, fatigue, miscarriage, even premature aging. Donkeys can't reproduce that fast. A female donkey is pregnant for 12 full months and has just one foal at a time. She doesn't start breeding until age two or three. So when Chinese demand exploded, China's own donkey population collapsed from 11 million in 1992 to under 2 million by 2020. The hunt then went global. Africa has roughly 33 million donkeys, two-thirds of the world's supply. Botswana's donkey population has halved since 2016. In Kenya, government-approved slaughterhouses killed about half the country's donkeys in three years. According to The Donkey Sanctuary, 41% of African donkey owners surveyed had at least one animal stolen. Donkeys are walked for weeks across borders, denied food and water, until they collapse. They're hit on the head with sledgehammers. Their throats are slit. Some are still breathing when they're skinned. A 2017 PETA investigation in China found foals as young as 5 months old killed this way. Up to one in five donkeys dies before reaching the slaughterhouse. In February 2024, all 55 African Union countries voted to ban the trade for 15 years across the continent. China is Africa's biggest trading partner. The continent banned this trade anyway. The Donkey Sanctuary still projects demand will hit 6.8 million skins a year by 2027. Within weeks of the ban, donkey theft spiked across Africa. The trade went underground. Chinese companies are now in talks to set up donkey farms in Pakistan instead. A donkey in rural Africa is often a family's only way to fetch water, carry goods to market, and send kids to school. When it gets stolen overnight, the women and children become the donkey. They walk further with heavier loads. The girls drop out of school first. The donkey in this photo is leaning against a wall because it's exhausted. The industry on its back is worth $8 billion.