Recently, some Western ** have been extremely excited and have actually set their sights on China's donkey skins. Several BBC stories headlined, "Savage donkey skins** are finally banned" and "Millions of donkeys are killed every year to make medicines".
The South China Morning Post also reported that "China slaughters more than 5 million donkeys every year, but only 2 million of them are domestically studied." The rest comes from imported donkey skins, which could contribute to illegality in other countries**".
It turned out that on February 18, local time, the leaders of the African Union member states approved a motion at the AU summit held in Ethiopia to announce a 15-year ban on donkey skins of member states.
The ban was proposed in November by the AU Specialized Technical Committee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment to reduce the pressure on livestock, communities and the environment in Africa from donkey skins**.
You must know that donkey skin is the main raw material for making ejiao. The market size of China's ejiao industry has grown from 23.6 billion yuan in 2014 to more than 46 billion yuan in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 1007%。The current output value of the ejiao industry is about 60 billion yuan. This paper ban affects more than just a sunrise industry worth tens of billions.
Given that Ejiao is a traditional Chinese medicine in China, the wider Chinese medicine industry may also be impacted, such as other medicinal materials that use animals as medicine. This is also the reason why the West is "gloating".
What's even more infuriating is that some ** deliberately emphasize the impact of donkey skin on local culture and ecology in the content of the report, which is completely contrary to the idea of ecological diversity advocated by China.
So what will be the impact of this ban on our country? What is Ejiao like in reality?
Ejiao and donkey skin.
Many of our memories of Ejiao, in addition to knowing that it is a traditional Chinese medicine, are probably the advertising implants in "The Legend of Zhen Huan". A certain Ejiao has been chanted dozens of times in the mouths of the queen mother, the palace masters, and the palace maids and doctors, and it is really a noble and omnipotent "harem artifact".
According to historical records, the original Ejiao** included horses, cows, and even rats, and very few donkeys. Because during the Qin Dynasty, there was no donkey species in the Central Plains. It was not until the Song Dynasty that donkey glue gradually became dominant. At that time, wars were frequent, and cowhide was an important strategic resource, which was used to make army equipment such as armor, bows, crossbows, etc., so it was strictly controlled.
Subsequently, the society gradually entered a period of peaceful farming, and cattle and horses became important production tools, which should not be arbitrary. Due to the limited resources of cowhide and horse skin, and the strong adaptability of donkeys, and good reproductive ability, it has naturally become the main source of Ejiao production.
Today's national pharmacopoeia stipulates that ejiao can only be boiled from donkey skin. The effect of the rubber block boiled from the skin of other animals is different, for example, the rubber block made from cowhide is called yellow gelatin, and the effect is secondary. Ejiao made from horse skin has the opposite effect, and pregnant women may miscarry once they consume it. Therefore, the production of ejiao mainly relies on the specific raw material of donkey skin.
So what's going on with this surge in demand?
In fact, the advertising placement in "The Legend of Zhen Huan" was only the tip of the iceberg of Ejiao's "cultural" marketing back then. A certain Ejiao brand also shouted the slogan of "Moutai in Medicine", hoping to make Ejiao a daily nourishing choice and make it enter the minds of high-end consumers. In recent years, health and wellness fashion, including the popularity of traditional culture, have all pushed up the demand for Ejiao and its raw materials.
However, donkeys are not leeks after all. According to the National Animal Husbandry Statistical Yearbook, the number of donkeys in China has declined from 11 million in the 90s of the 20th century to 6 million in 2018, and is still declining at about 300,000 per year. Donkeys are not easy to raise.
In short supply. This was followed by a sharp rise in **. Some Ejiao enterprises with donkey skin as the main raw material began to import donkey skin from overseas.
In the face of soaring costs and the chaos of the industry, some leading Ejiao enterprises have started a new layout since 2018 or even earlier: establishing win-win partnerships with upstream donkey farmers and leather merchants, reasonable pricing, not pursuing the lowest ** in acquisitions, and taking the initiative to leave a certain profit margin for the upstream;
By establishing a donkey breeding base, it provides donkey breeding and technical guidance for the upstream to help farmers become professionals in donkey breeding;
In order to help donkey farmers make a fortune, they not only purchase donkey skins from donkey farmers, but also help donkey farmers sell donkey meat with ideal **, and buy those that cannot be sold by themselves and develop them into donkey meat ......products
All in all, it is necessary to stabilize the basic plate of donkey skin.
Substitute for donkey skin and ejiao.
Is there a substitute for donkey skin? Or is there a substitute for Ejiao?
Experiments have proved that the main components of ejiao are only protein and amino acids, and there is no significant difference from other gums made from donkey, cowhide, horse or pig skin.
As for compound ejiao, most of them are added with medicinal materials, such as angelica, motherwort and so on. Among the Chinese herbal medicines, Ejiao is not the only medicinal material that "nourishes yin and nourishes blood". From the perspective of medicinal value, the essence of Ejiao should be a tonic that ordinary consumers can afford.
From the perspective of edible, when you look up "Ejiao" on the e-commerce platform, you will find that the most moderate and high-sales products are mainly Ejiao cakes of various brands. If the price of Ejiao cake goes up, I can eat other cakes.
From the perspective of cultural inheritance, the production process of Ejiao is an ancient and unique process, from donkey skin processing
Boiling, filtering, concentrating, glue, and cutting have gone through hundreds of years of inheritance and development. It is a treasure of Chinese medicinal diet culture, and of course it is irreplaceable.
Possible outcomes.
Judging from the import of donkey skins, it has remained stable in recent years. According to the data of Grande credit statistics, the most important importers of donkey skins in China are Nigeria, Mexico, and Benin, accounting for 44% of imports, of which Africa accounts for 60% of imports, and other regions are mainly Latin America and West Asia.
The African Union's ban on donkey skins will definitely have an impact on domestic donkey skin imports, but it is difficult to say how big the impact will be, depending on the effectiveness of the ban.
The impact on leading enterprises will not be very large, after all, they originally engaged in some breeding bases (company + farmer model) in Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Shandong, Hebei and other places, and it would be good to expand the scale. In addition, imports from South America and West Asia are also optional. For example, a leading domestic enterprise has formed fixed-point procurement in Egypt, Peru, Mexico and other places, and diversified import procurement.
But for some small Ejiao enterprises, there must still be blows, because they are still in the form of **.
But even in the end, the ejiao industry really came to a supply-side reform, making supply and demand more stable and rational. For consumers, this is not a good thing.
References. African Union announces ban on donkey skins for 15 years, "China's ejiao production may be hit hard", Observer.com, February 2024.
Classic Cases of Chinese Enterprises 2018, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, May 2018.
The Impact of the Donkey Skin Import Ban on Dong'e Ejiao", Xueqiu, February 2024.