SA implicated in donkey skin trade
FOLLOWING the bludgeoning of hundreds of donkeys in the Northern Cape last year, a report has been released on World Donkey Day implicating South Africa in the supply of donkeys for Chinese medicine.
According to the report, donkeys are being slaughtered in great numbers in South Africa for their skins and exported to produce ejiao, a gelatine-like substance used in Chinese traditional medicines. The report clearly shows that ejiao has no medicinal value.
According to Audrey Delsink of Humane Society International (HIS), the number of donkey hides allowed to be exported from South Africa is supposedly restricted to 7 300 a year; “but,” she says, “a simple Google search reveals hundreds of South African traders advertising donkey hide export with minimum orders of a few hundred pieces, to 40-foot containers.”
British charity the Donkey Sanctuary estimates that the demand coming from China could reach up to 10 million donkeys per year, representing almost a quarter of the entire global donkey population. It points out that most of the hide imports come from less-developed areas where the price is lower.
The sanctuary says donkeys are important for transport and farming in many developing countries. This massive slaughter is reported to have seriously affected agricultural production and the livelihoods of the local people.
As a result, several African countries, including Burkina Faso, Niger, Ethiopia, Botswana, Mali and others banned the export of skins because the extent of the trade has dramatically reduced their donkey numbers, while rural communities in Kenya have conducted street protests in Nairobi against the trade.
“But sadly,” says Marcelle Meredith, CEO of the NSPCA (The National Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), “South Africa does not seem too concerned with following suit.”
Ejiao is a popular product used in food and drink or in beauty products such as face creams and is believed to improve blood circulation by people with anaemia, low blood cell counts or reproductive problems.
The substance is produced by boiling donkey skins and extracting the resulting gelatine.
The ejiao market is expected to maintain a growth rate of 15 percent annually, and worryingly China’s Ministry of Agriculture has included “donkey” as a target industry.
Meredith says that the donkey trade in South Africa also breaches all animal welfare concerns. “People don’t care how they raise, transport or even slaughter the donkeys,” she says, “as long as they get to sell the skins, it’s all that matters.”
In 2017, the NSPCA euthanised 70 donkeys after being discovered in a shocking condition on a farm outside Bloemfontein. Some pregnant mares had aborted, while hundreds of donkeys in the Northern Cape were illegally slaughtered by being bludgeoned with hammers and some skinned alive.
In May last year, the NSPCA discovered more than 1 000 donkey skins, and seven tiger skins that were being illegally exported.
The same month, the organisation had confiscated more than 100 donkey skins from a lion farm near Tosca in North West province.
Two months earlier, the SAPS reported that they had found 5 000 donkey skins in a container in Benoni estimated at over R4 million.
A dedicated donkey abattoir was going to be constructed in the North West province after embattled North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo visited China in 2015, saying on his return that trade in donkeys must be developed in the province to help create jobs.
Meredith says that plans for the abattoir have been shelved, at least for the time being, but she warns the underground trade in the province continues unabated. “The North West is the one of the worst provinces when it comes to animal welfare,” she said.
Delsink says: “It is also no secret that South Africa’s captive lion breeding industry, with many breeders based in the North West province, uses donkeys to feed their captive lions.”
Lion and other predator breeding facilities have for years bought donkeys from rural communities to feed their animals. “They pay about R500 per donkey, which ultimately deprives that person of a muchneeded work animal,” says Meredith.