China’s demand for donkey hide to produce herbal medicine is decimating the animal population in Kenya, according to a new report by France 24, a French television network.
Furthermore, local farmers who depend on the animals for farm labor and transportation are seeing their livelihoods being threatened.“E jiao” is a type of traditional Chinese medicine made by boiling down donkey hide, then extracting its gelatin and mixing it with a variety of herbs. A Chinese state television report once explained that about three jin (a Chinese unit of measurement equal to half a kilogram) of donkey hide only begets one jin of “e jiao.”
