New Report Reveals Biosecurity Risks of Donkey Skin Trade

Around the world, over 4.8 million donkeys are traded and slaughtered for their skins each year.

The demand for donkey skins is driven by the production of ejiao, or donkey-hide gelatin, a traditional Chinese remedy believed by some with no scientific basis to have medicinal properties.

A new report from The Donkey Sanctuary reveals the trade is also contributing significant and previously unrecognised risks to international biosecurity, including in Thailand, a common waypoint for donkey skins.

The import of donkey skins into Thailand is currently legal. However, Thailand is not a major market for donkey skins. Rather, donkey skin traders circumvent and undermine recipient country safeguards on biosecurity controls by shipping to ports in Thailand (or others such as Hong Kong) first before shipping to China.

The most recent FAO data, from 2018, shows the total number of horses in Thailand as 6,069, while just 30 donkeys were reported.

However, the donkeys’ locations were uncertain and it is likely they were underreported due to the unregulated nature of the trade.

Donkeys can easily play a role in outbreaks of African horse sickness (AHS), as they can spread the disease without displaying severe clinical signs. AHS is spread by biting and feeding on the blood of horses and donkeys.

A 2020 outbreak of AHS in Thailand, likely due to the importation of live equids (the group that includes horses, donkeys, and zebras), saw infection across six provinces before an equine movement lockdown curtailed its progress.

It infected 610 horses in 17 provinces, 568 of which died, including both high-value sports horses and working equids who support hundreds of thousands of people’s livelihoods.

No new cases have been found ever since a surveillance programme for animal diseases was initiated, but the unregulated trade of live donkeys and donkey skins could change that.

The report Biosecurity Risks and Implications for Human & Animal Health on a Global Scale contain the findings of donkey skin testing conducted by The Donkey Sanctuary and the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya (ILRI).

This testing identified multiple specimens contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) and African horse sickness (AHS). In the case of S.aureus contaminated skins, 44 of 108 tested were found to be carrying the drug-resistant MRSA variant, and three of the positive samples were carrying the PVL-toxin – known to cause invasive necrotising diseases in humans.

Donkeys are generally susceptible to the same infectious diseases as horses, many of which can also infect humans via ingestion, inhalation and skin contact. Close contact with sick equids puts people at risk, as does eating, inhaling, or touching infectious by-products.

Diseases vary in severity and impacts on human health can range from mild conditions such as ringworm to potentially deadly diseases like rabies and glanders.

These are occupational hazards for farm workers, abattoir staff and any person involved in the transport and handling of donkeys or the processing, packing, haulage and shipping of donkey skins.

Diseases that are endemic in source countries may not be present at all in transit or destination countries, leading to potential outbreaks of diseases in local, naïve equine populations.

This is what happened with AHS in Thailand in 2020, as the disease’s prior absence in the country made the outbreak more difficult to contain.

Worryingly, the donkey skin trade currently operates without adequate veterinary and biosecurity protocols. The unregulated and clandestine nature of much of the trade also means that shipments are often impossible to track, and contaminated skins therefore unable to be traced.

However, even skins processed in licenced slaughterhouses constitute a biosecurity risk. 

Marianne Steele, Chief Executive of The Donkey Sanctuary said: “The global trade in donkey skins is cruel and inhumane, unregulated and unnecessary, which results in suffering for donkeys and donkey-dependent communities on a devastating scale. While many may choose to turn away from the direct impacts on animals and people, I would implore consumers, governments and the wider public to take notice of the risks to animal and human health.

“If nothing else, the recent lessons of Covid-19, and the current outbreak of avian flu, should make us sit up and take notice of the emerging threats that zoonotic diseases pose.”

Considering this high level of risk, The Donkey Sanctuary is calling on the governments of China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand to immediately stop the import of donkey skins, and on the national governments of exporting countries to take immediate steps to stop the trade in donkey skins.

Dr Faith Burden, Executive Director of Equine Operations at The Donkey Sanctuary, said: “The findings throughout the report are shocking, although not altogether surprising – the disease risks for animals and humans are obvious, with poor hygiene at all stages of the trade. The lack of traceability and basic biosecurity puts people and animals in general at significant risk. The skins tested were sourced from one slaughterhouse on one day, but it is likely that skins from other sources around the world if tested, would indicate the presence of dangerous pathogens such as glanders, equine influenza and African swine fever.”