Chinese demand for donkey
gelatine is hammering the Chinese and African donkey populations, putting the
price of donkeys out of reach for subsistence farmers
Kimon de Greef
Tuesday 31 October
2017 11.00 GMTLast modified on Tuesday 31 October
2017 13.54 GMT
It was a bout of period pain that
led to Liu Yanan’s first taste of donkey gelatine. The 13-year-old was visiting
family in Beijing when her cramps started for the first time. Her aunt took out
an ornate box filled with smooth chocolate-brown slabs, broke off a small
piece, and stirred it into a pot of sweetened rice porridge.
The medicine was ejiao, a Chinese
medicine made from donkey skins and used for over 2,500 years. Yanan hesitated
before eating the mixture, but she trusted her aunt and wanted relief from the
pain. “I felt comfortable afterwards. My body was warm,” she says. “I took it
for a month and the trouble went away.”
That was back in 2004, and since
then China’s ejiao industry has turned into a global megabusiness. What was
once a humble blood tonic for conditions like anemia – a claim supported by no
clinical evidence – has been rebranded as a wellness product for China’s
ascendant middle class, and now features in face creams, sweets and liqueurs,
as well as a wide variety of medicinal preparations. There are claims it will
help with anemia
and acne, boost
your energy, improve your sleep, nourish your yin, prevent
cancer, make you look better and even improve
your libido. It is billed, in short, as a miracle elixir.
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