Governments are seeking to curb donkey skin exports to China, where demand for traditional medicine and other products is threatening animals that rural households need.
For years, Chinese companies and their contractors have been slaughtering millions of donkeys across Africa, coveting gelatin from the animals’ hides that is processed into traditional medicines, popular sweets and beauty products in China.
But a growing demand for the gelatin has decimated donkey populations at such alarming rates in African countries that governments are now moving to put a brake on the mostly unregulated trade.
The African Union, a body that encompasses the continent’s 55 states, adopted a continentwide ban on donkey skin exports this month in the hope that stocks will recover.
Rural households across Africa rely on donkeys for transportation and agriculture.
Yet donkeys only breed a foal every couple of years.
“A means of survival in Africa fuels the demand for luxury products from the middle class in China,” said Emmanuel Sarr, who heads the West Africa regional office of Brooke, a nongovernment organization based in London that works to protect donkeys and horses.
“This cannot continue.”
Thou shalt not covet dat ass.
Jesus Christ, can the Chinese government just tell their people to fuck off with this shit. Bear bile, rhino horn, fucking donkey skin? This shit’s been proven to be 1000% bullshit clinically. Fucking ban it n crack down on it.
a lot of the violence toward animals in asia is based on superstition and old homeopathic medicine that doesn’t do anything. there are pretty significant cultural differences between the new/educated and the old/uneducated populations.
i’m hoping that this sort of thing is eventually phased out on its own. governments don’t want to do anything. in areas where it’s actually banned, people still do it. everything is small business, family business, back yards, wet markets etc. nothing is regulated.
And if they just want the gelatin, there are sustainable sources like fish.
Fucking ignorant behavior. What’s next? Otter noses for soup?
Don’t ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to
“African wild ass” is an S-tier animal name.
many countries in this region have no enforceable protections for animals at all. hunters in america know this well enough. they fly over and kill pretty much whatever they want, and then sell the meat to a local fence.
the jesus types view the idea that humans can do harm to the environment as blasphemy, because it implies that god is not in complete control of nature. i’ve never met a hunter that wasn’t an uneducated belligerent dick.
No
I’m usually quite barely able to constrain myself not to get mad at quackery. Homeopathy, power bracelets and other stuff does really grind my gears, however usually the people that abide by it funny harm anyone but their own wallet.
But when children and animals are hurt over that shit I’m seething. Certainly the Chinese that insist on however rare an animal it is the better the medicine. Let them make Pokemon medicine ffs
The title makes it seem that their one child policy and the resulting disproportion between genders bring expected results.
About the content - people saying that education will solve the problem don’t know how this works. At least not in one or two generations, it takes longer.
Enforced regulations (Africa, but … at least possible) and domestic breeding (Africa, but … things are changing slowly) will happen sooner.
