Bid to halt slaughter of Africa’s donkeys

NAIROBI: Kenya’s agriculture minister has ordered donkey slaughterhouses to be shut amid growing concerns over the theft of the animals by gangs seeking their skin for use in Chinese medicines.

Kenya has become the epicentre of a fast-growing industry in Africa to supply donkey skins to China, where a gelatin, ejiao, made from boiling them down is used in a traditional medicine believed to stop ageing and boost libido.

Kenya has four licensed donkey abattoirs, more than any other country on the continent, which slaughter around 1 000 donkeys a day, according to government data.

But growing Chinese demand for ejiao has led to a black market with gangs hired by skin-smuggling networks to steal donkeys, inciting anger in communities who depend on the animals for livelihoods, farming or transport.

“We want to stop that criminality. We want to stop that brutality,” Agriculture Minister Peter Munya said on Monday after meeting donkey owners in Nairobi.

“(We want) to restore the donkey to its rightful place in our society, that of supporting livelihoods and providing crucial transport that is not easy to get, especially for the lower echelons of our society.”

If the trade continued, donkey populations would be decimated, he said.

The slaughterhouses have been ordered to close within a month. More than 300 000 donkeys, 15% of Kenya’s population, have been slaughtered for skin and meat export in less than three years, says the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organisation (Kalro).

Over 4 000 were reported stolen over the same period from April 2016 to December 2018, Kalro said in June last year.

The report warned the animals were being slaughtered at a rate five times higher than their population was growing, which could wipe out Kenya’s donkey population by as early as 2023.