By GERALD ANDAE
A report published by the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (Kalro) and Brooke East Africa reveals that farmers lose Sh11,390 on every working donkey that is offered for slaughter.
The report indicates that between April 2016 and December this year, farmers are projected to have lost Sh28.3 billion.
“Donkey keepers and users whose livelihoods depended on the donkey earned an average of Sh11,390 per month from providing transportation services, while laborers in the donkey abattoirs earned an average of Sh8,460 per month,” says the report.
“Assuming that 25 percent (75,494) of the donkeys slaughtered were working donkeys, and would otherwise have been used to generate a mean monthly income of Sh11,390, the income foregone was valued at Sh28.3 billion during the reference period,” it added.
Kenya has four licensed donkey abattoirs that have since 2016 been allowed to slaughter and export the donkey products.
The study revealed that 301,977 donkeys were slaughtered since commissioning of export donkey abattoirs in Kenya with 6.9 percent slaughtered in 2016, 40.3 percent in 2017 and 52.8 percent in 2018.
More than 98 percent of the donkeys that are slaughtered are destined to China with high demand for the animal skin leading to high cases of theft and smuggling.
Many of them end up in an eastern town called Dong’e, China, where most of the world’s ejiao — a traditional medicine made from gelatin extracted from boiled donkey hides — is made…Read more>>
