Working horse and donkey charity Brooke asked Senegal to take a stand against the donkey skin trade by hosting an event at the British Embassy in Dakar last month.
Members of the Brooke in West Africa team attended the event alongside journalists, activists and animal welfare advocates who pledged their commitment to ending the slaughter of donkeys for their skins.
The demand for donkey skin has grown alarmingly in recent years due to the popularity of ejiao, a gelatin product used in traditional Chinese medicine and commonly found in cosmetics, which is obtained from boiling donkey skin.
In 2021, the Ejiao Act was reintroduced in the House of Representatives to ban the sale and trade of ejiao in the US, which Brooke USA is lobbying to be implemented. Animal welfare groups including Brooke USA Foundation gathered outside Amazon’s headquarters in Virginia last October to deliver a petition of over 370,000 signatures to protest its sales of donkey skin products.
In February 2024, thanks to lobbying from Brooke and other animal welfare organisations, the African Union banned the donkey skin trade across their continent.
Honouring Brooke at 90
The event at the British Embassy in Dakar, which took place on Thursday 30 January, also commemorated Brooke’s 90th anniversary and celebrated the charity’s founder Dorothy Brooke.
“Dorothy Brooke is an inspiration to us all,” said Brooke West Africa’s director, Emmanuel Sarr,
“She reminds us that each of us can play a role in building a fairer world for the animals who share our daily lives.
“Let us remember Brooke and Dorothy Brooke and renew our commitment to the causes that were so dear to her. It is recognising that this fight is far from over in tackling the devastating donkey skin trade.”
Brooke is the world’s largest working equine welfare organisation and improves the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Image © Brooke.
