Read our reports on the donkey skin trade
Aviation Risk and Assessment Operational Guidelines (2024)
These operational guidelines explain the biosecurity risk of smuggling inadequately processed donkey skins alongside legitimate cargo such as leather or textiles, for example. It also highlights concealment methods and crime convergence, where networks involved in the donkey skin trade may also be linked to organised crime such as wildlife and drug trafficking.
Transport Sector Threat and Risk Assessment Fact Sheet (2024)
This fact sheet looks at the impacts and risks associated with the donkey skin trade and provides red flag indicators and known trading routes of trafficking. It also provides detailed guidelines and recommendations for the transport sector in assessing, detecting and reporting the illegal trafficking of donkey skins.
Donkeys in Global Trade: Wildlife Crime, Welfare, Biosecurity, and the Impact on Women (2024)
This briefing document contains all the necessary background on the donkey skin trade and the implications it has on donkey welfare and other key areas such as the impact on women and communities. It also contains clear and comprehensive recommendations for how industrial and Government leaders can help end the brutal skin trade.
The Global Trade in Donkey Skins: A Ticking Time Bomb - Biosecurity Risks and Implications for Human and Animal Health on a Global Scale (2022)
This report, the second in the Ticking time bomb series, delves further into the biosecurity risks associated with the global trade in donkey skins and demonstrates how the trade is putting people and animals at unnecessary and unacceptable risk of infectious diseases. The trade in donkey skins presents an inherent risk to human and animal health, and to global One Health, One Welfare efforts, and this risk is increased by the opportunistic, largely unregulated, and often illegal nature of many aspects of the trade.
Myths or Money? Challenges and Implications of Donkey Farming (2022)
This report looks at the challenges and implications of farming a species that is not well suited to intensive farming situations, and answers the question if donkey farming is an economically viable solution to the shortage in supply of donkey skins.
The Global Trade in Donkey Skins: A Ticking Time Bomb - The Donkey Skin Trade as a Trojan Horse for Wildlife Trafficking (2022)
This latest report reveals the size and scale of the illegal online donkey skin trade and uncovers how organised crime is facilitating the trafficking of donkey skins to satisfy demand for ejiao, a traditional Chinese medicine.
Cellular Agriculture: The Case for Transition Towards a Humane, Sustainable and Safe Future (2021)
In 2021, we contacted two major ejiao producers to present an alternative solution for securing a humane supply of donkey collagen, known as cellular agriculture or ‘lab-grown’ collagen. We presented them with a report putting forward the case for transition.
Under the Skin: Update (2019)
An update to our first report was published in November 2019.
Under the Skin (2017)
We published our first Under the Skin report in 2017, which was made available in nine languages to help tackle donkey welfare challenges worldwide. This first report on the donkey skin trade revealed the shocking scale of the global trade and its race to keep up with an ever-growing demand for the ejiao.
Further reading
Our research portal contains peer-reviewed academic papers that look at the donkey skin trade and related issues.
Find out more
Millions of donkeys are slaughtered for their skins every year. Learn about the causes, impacts and the campaign to Stop the Slaughter here.
Learn about cellular agriculture, a way of sustainably and humanely creating donkey collagen without the need for live animals.
Find out about the criminal elements currently using the donkey skin trade as a smokescreen for other illicit activities.
