Online Retail Giants Remove Cruel Donkey-Skin Gelatin After PETA Appeal

eBay and Jet.com Lead U.S. Companies in Action Against Cruel Chinese ‘Medicine’ Found in Cosmetics and Candies

For Immediate Release:
February 15, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

After learning from PETA that donkeys’ heads are smashed in with sledgehammers for a traditional Chinese “medicine” product known as ejiao, which is made from boiled donkey hides, eBay and Walmart-owned Jet.com have agreed to remove all products containing the cruelly produced ingredient immediately. In an e-mail to PETA, eBay said that it had already removed several listings containing ejiao and would be adding the word to its filters in order to better detect future attempts to list it.

A number of other U.S.-based companies—including purveyors of candies, snacks, and beauty products containing this product—have also pledged to drop ejiao after hearing from PETA.

PETA’s video exposé of the Chinese ejiao industry revealed that thousands of donkeys were kept in filthy, cramped, concrete-floored pens and beaten when they reached the market. Their heads were then struck with sledgehammers and their throats slit so that workers could cut off their skins. The footage shows that some of the animals continued to breathe and move after this.

“These companies learned from PETA that donkeys as young as 5 months old are bashed in the head and often endure a slow, agonizing death in order to produce ejiao, so they pulled the product from their shelves,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “It’s time to bust the myth that using rhino horns, deer tongues, and donkey skins does anything except cause enormous suffering.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any way”—notes that last year’s exposé also revealed that donkeys were forced to stand in their own feces and urine. Some were so malnourished, injured, or ill that they were unable to walk. The only water available to them was dirty and green with algae. Workers also confided to PETA Asia’s eyewitness that they were concerned that environmental inspectors would fine them or shut the place down.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.