The three-pink donkey with a pink mouth, belly and eyes is a kind of Texas donkey.
China News Weekly reporter / Du Wei
Published in China News Weekly on August 19, 2019, No. 912
A black, fit body, height 155cm, body length 156cm, age 3 years old, is in the middle of the youth. He is the "Prince", yes, the "Black Donkey Prince". This is the Dong'e Ejiao International Breeding Center located next to the 325 Provincial Highway in Dong'a County, Liaocheng City, Shandong Province. It covers an area of hundreds of acres and is home to tens of thousands of Donkey Dong'a black donkeys for breeding and breeding.
The reason for raising donkeys in Dong'a County is that donkey skin is the core raw material for boiling ejiao, and China is experiencing a "donkey famine". Over the past three decades, China has relinquished the throne of the world's largest donkey-raising country, and the number of donkeys has fallen from 11.2 million at its peak, a quarter of the world's donkeys, to 2.5328 million in 2018.
Although a little stubborn, donkeys have obvious advantages: good endurance, recognition of the road, and eat less than horses. Therefore, before the 1990s, donkeys were all over the countryside of northern China, and many families had one or two donkeys to grind, cultivate land, and transport goods. Since then, with the popularization of mechanization of agricultural production, the status of donkeys has become increasingly marginalized, and the value has shifted from service to commercial use.
In order to boil donkey skins, Dong'e Ejiao has established donkey breeding demonstration bases throughout the country, and has also driven surrounding farmers and enterprises to raise donkeys, and began to look for donkeys all over the world. Against this backdrop, the donkey industry, which ends at slaughter in China over the past five years, has ushered in a period of expansion in development demand.
Ejiao save the donkey?
Dong'a County belongs to Liaocheng City, Shandong Province, and the only difference here compared to other counties in China is the Ejiao mark that can be seen everywhere. Walking on Ejiao Street, whether it is a direct store, a pharmacy, or a supermarket, all kinds of ejiao products are placed. At the intersection of Ejiao Street, the giant slogan of "Nourishing National Treasure, East Ejiao" is in sight. On Xiangjiang Road in the northeast corner of the county, almost every kilometer, a sign of an ejiao production enterprise breaks into view.
At present, the total annual output of ejiao in China is about 5,000 tons, and the demand for donkey skin, the core raw material of ejiao, is 4 million pieces per year, but the domestic supply does not exceed 1.8 million pieces.
In the company's annual report in the past two years, Qin Yufeng, the head of Dong'e Ejiao, regarded the contradiction between the shortage of upstream raw material supply and downstream demand as the main problem restricting the company's development.
Over the past three decades, the stock of domestic donkeys has fallen at a rate of nearly 3 per cent per year due to the decline in the value of service; in the past five years, the decline in numbers has been even more rapid, averaging more than 6 per cent per year.
The International Breeding Center of Fine Breeding Donkey of Dong'e Ejiao Co., Ltd. Photo / Reporter Du Wei
In response to the "donkey famine", since 2002, Dong'e Ejiao has begun to gradually establish a number of "standard donkey breeding demonstration bases" in Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Xinjiang and other places, hoping to lead and drive the surrounding people to raise donkeys. Qin Yufeng also wants to build two "million donkey bases" in Liaocheng and Inner Mongolia.
As early as 2006, after taking office, Qin Yufeng redefined its products from "blood tonic holy medicine" to "nourishing national treasures", which means that the target consumer group expanded, while at the same time, the donkey inventory declined, an increase and a decrease, and the tight supply of donkey skins was further intensified.
The demand for raw materials in the ejiao industry has directly raised the price of domestic donkey skins. In 2000, the price of a donkey skin was only more than twenty yuan, after that, it rose to several hundred yuan, and then became 15 or 20 yuan a pound, and in 2017, the price of donkey skin reached its peak, about 80 yuan per kilogram, and a donkey skin was equivalent to 3,000 yuan.
Qin Yufeng put forward the "Donkey Bill" at the two sessions of Shandong Province in 2015, proposing that donkeys be included in the scope of livestock subsidies like cattle and sheep. Also in this year, the Donkey Industry Branch of the China Animal Husbandry Association was established, with Qin Yufeng as the president, becoming the largest "donkey official" in China. At the same time, with the help of Dong'e Ejiao, Liaocheng's "Implementation Opinions on the Development of a Million Meat And Donkey Industry (2015-2019)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Opinions") was issued.
The "Implementation Opinions" plans to use 5 years to develop the number of donkeys in the city to 1 million heads, and 400,000 heads per year, so that Liaocheng will become the largest donkey production base in the country, and the donkey raising method adopted is the "government + leading enterprise + bank + base + cooperative" model. Simply put, it is a government guarantee, the bank gives loans to farmers, the enterprise provides donkey foals, and then the price is recycled into donkeys and donkey milk. Depending on the scale of farming, the government gives subsidies ranging from 100,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan.
According to the data given by the Liaocheng Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau, as of now, there are 56,500 donkeys in Liaocheng, which is far from the breeding target of one million heads. Liu Wenqiang, a professor at the College of Agriculture of Liaocheng University, and others investigated and analyzed 172 large-scale donkey farms in the city and found that the income of fattening donkeys with good breeding efficiency is about 1,000 yuan, and under normal circumstances, it can reach 600 yuan to 700 yuan. Liu Wenqiang and others said that the low professional quality of breeding personnel, the lack of loan funds, and the immature breeding technology have restricted the development of the donkey industry in Liaocheng.
Wang Changfa, dean of the Liaocheng Institute of Efficient Breeding and Ecological Breeding of Donkeys in Liaocheng University, has a good understanding of the million donkey breeding projects implemented in the city in the past few years. He said that in the first three years of the implementation of the plan, the number of donkeys in the city once reached a peak of 80,000 or 90,000 heads, but at least half of them were bought from Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and other places to fatten, which did not require too much technical content, and farmers could also benefit from it. Farmers who saw the sweetness joined one after another.
In order not to be subject to external resources, the Liaocheng city government began to further encourage farmers to breed female donkeys to achieve self-sufficiency. But the cost of raising a female donkey is high and there are technical requirements. By the second half of 2018, the domestic donkey market took a sharp turn for the worse, and many people were discouraged from raising donkeys.
Wang Changfa explained that it is actually not easy to raise a donkey, with large investment, large risk and low return. Donkey pregnancies are singletons with a longer breeding cycle. Pigs out of the pen time is almost half a year, chickens only need about 40 days, and the donkey only pregnancy cycle is as long as 1 year or 1 and a half years, the baby donkey foal to be born half a year after the weaning, even the cow's pregnancy cycle and lactation period is shorter than the donkey, breeding technology is more mature than the donkey. Donkeys can only mate until they are 3 years old, and only when they are 4 years old are adults can they get out of the pen. A donkey's "donkey birth" is nearly 30 years, and a female donkey can only give birth to about 10 small donkeys in her lifetime, which is an important reason for the slow growth of donkey stock.
In terms of revenue, in the past, donkeys had service value such as pulling and grinding and cultivating land, but now, such explicit secondary values no longer exist. Wang Changfa said that the donkey's requirements for feed are not high, corn straw, peanut straw, soybean straw, sweet potato straw, etc. are not rejected, and the cost of raising a day is almost as long as 5 yuan. But to eat well, you have to add money, and the food cost may need more than ten yuan a day. The "Black Donkey Prince" of the East Ejiao International Breeding Center's "Black Donkey Prince" is dozens of yuan a day, and he also eats apples and carrots. But the speed of donkey meat is not fast, under normal circumstances, an average of 7 meats a day.
At the market price of 20 yuan per kilogram, a small donkey foal that has just been weaned and weighs about 200 kilograms is bought back, fattened to 500 kilograms, sold at a price of 16 yuan per kilogram, excluding the general cost of feed of more than 2,000 yuan, and the gross profit is nearly 2,000 yuan. After deducting the cost of the site and labor, the net profit of a donkey is between 500 yuan and 1500 yuan.
Although donkeys rarely get sick, it is not easy to say whether large-scale breeding will become ill, and once the disease occurs, coupled with the price fluctuations of donkeys, it is difficult to make money. And because "one slot head can not tie two donkeys", the conditions for raising donkeys are also special, the female donkey can sleep in the "Chase Shop", and the male donkey must live in the "single room".
Looking at the whole of Shandong, 10 years ago, there were only 40,000 or 50,000 donkeys in the province, and now, it has gradually recovered to about 150,000. But compared with the province's 1.5 million heads in the early 1990s, the number is now only one-tenth of what it was then.
Although Qin Yufeng also laid out a million donkey breeding plan in Inner Mongolia and western Liaoning, the number of donkeys was not optimistic. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, from 2007 to 2017, the stock of donkeys in Inner Mongolia fell from 872,800 to 754,500, and in Liaoning from 1,039,900 to 498,800. In Gansu and Xinjiang, the other two "million-dollar households" that once raised donkeys, the number of donkeys also fell from 1.01 million and 1.19 million in 2007 to 365,500 and 208,200 respectively.
Sun Yujiang, vice president of the Donkey Industry Branch of the China Animal Husbandry Association and professor of Qingdao Agricultural University, said that judging by the amount of donkeys raised by ejiao enterprises, it is only a drop in the bucket, and it is difficult to even supply its own ejiao production. The sharp decline in the number of donkeys in the country, in addition to the decline in the value of donkey service, is also in the process of the development of the donkey industry, the force of the first, second and third industries is uneven, the secondary industry for the purpose of slaughtering is overheated, and some farmers even sell and kill the female donkeys used for breeding in order to make short-term profits, resulting in the unsustainable development of the donkey industry.
Donkey industry map
Donkeys and horses are inextricably linked. Millions of years ago, the two shared a common ancestor, and the evolution of donkeys went through the process from real horses to wild donkeys to domestic donkeys. Donkeys entered China about 4,000 years ago, passing through Egypt, then through western Asia, through Iran, Afghanistan, India, and the first step was Xinjiang, which is the predecessor of today's Xinjiang donkey.
After a thousand years in Xinjiang, the donkey's migration route extended to the second stop, Gansu. Later, more than 2,000 years ago, the donkey arrived in Xi'an again. During the Western Han Dynasty, a large number of Xinjiang donkeys arrived in the Central Plains from the "Silk Road", and trade demand became a pass for donkeys to go south and north at that time. Then, starting from northern Shaanxi, the footprints of the donkey traveled all over the country to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, forming the Kulun donkey, which went to Dezhou 1500 years ago and evolved into today's Dezhou donkey.
There are 24 varieties of donkeys in China, the common ones are Dezhou donkey, Guangling donkey, Guanzhong donkey, North China donkey, etc., in addition, there are endangered species, such as Jiaodong small donkey, northern Jiangsu small donkey, Anhui Huaibei gray donkey and so on. In terms of body size, Chinese donkeys can be divided into three camps: large donkeys, medium-sized donkeys, and small donkeys. The physical characteristics of different types of donkeys are also closely related to the living environment in which they live.
Xinjiang donkey belongs to the small donkey, which is due to the local temperature difference between day and night, drought and heat caused, in order to dissipate heat, the skin of the donkey is also thin, if you do ejiao, it means that the amount of donkey skin is low. In Gansu, the climate and forage conditions improved slightly, and the size of the donkey became larger. Texas donkey is a large donkey, the donkey skin is also thick, and there are two kinds, all black on the body is called aconitum donkey, and the other eye circles, belly, and mouth are pink and white, called three pink donkeys. The aconitum is considered an excellent ingredient for making donkey skins.
Donkeys are tolerant to rough feeding, high temperatures and drought, but not to humidity, so there are not many donkey species in the south. In China, there has always been a saying that "rich horses, poor donkeys", more than 60% of the country's donkey stock is concentrated in the "old and young border poor" areas.
Wang Changfa collected donkey samples from 10 countries, including Ethiopia, Australia, Spain and China, and analyzed the origin of donkey domestication, migration path, and local donkey breed formation from the genomic level. He explained that after the donkey was introduced to Europe from Africa, it followed the pace of colonization to the United States and Australia. The introduction of donkeys in Spain and the Netherlands is also not unrelated to colonization. In Europe and the United States, there are also unexpected types of donkeys. In britain, for example, there are mini donkeys that are only about 60 centimeters tall, and in France, there are long donkeys that can reach a height of 2.4 meters and resemble small mammoths.
In the world map of the donkey family, the donkey stock is mainly concentrated in developing countries, in 2015, the world's donkey stock of 43.5539 million heads, of which 83.88% of the donkeys are concentrated in Asia and Africa. Due to the sharp decline in donkey ownership in China, after 2008, Africa surpassed Asia to become the largest donkey breeding region.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, around 2011, the stock of donkeys in Ethiopia and China reached a roughly equivalent size. In 2015, the number of Ethiopian donkeys rose to 8.4392 million, ranking first in the world's donkey kingdom, while the number of Chinese donkeys was only 5.4211 million. The rise and fall of the strength of donkey-producing countries around the world has written a footnote for the overseas skin of Chinese ejiao enterprises.
From January 1, 2018, the "provisional tax rate for the year" of the "prescribed weight of the whole raw donkey skin" was reduced from 5% to 2%, that is, if a donkey skin was imported for 1,000 yuan, the tax could be reduced from 50 yuan to 20 yuan, which to a certain extent promoted Chinese enterprises to find donkeys overseas. Li Guihai, president of the Shandong Ejiao Industry Association, said that the proportion of imported donkey skins used as ejiao now accounts for at least 60%.
The direct effect of overseas "seeking skins" is first of all to increase the value of local donkeys. As in China, donkeys are mainly used for military purposes in African countries, and Africans are not interested in donkey skins and donkey meat. Driven by Chinese buyers, the price of donkeys in Burkina Faso, a landlocked African country, rose by more than 60% between 2014 and 2016; in Kenya, the value of donkeys tripled in 2016, from $65 to $165.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the large export of donkey skins has also caused a decline in the local "donkey mouth". From 2011 to 2016, the "donkey mouth" in Botswana, Colombia and Kyrgyzstan in Africa fell by 60%, 48% and 40% respectively.
In Zimbabwe, a slaughterhouse that had proposed to kill about 12,000 donkeys a year, equivalent to losing nearly a tenth of the country's donkey population, was halted in 2017. At present, in order to avoid the local donkey species becoming endangered animals, more than a dozen African countries, including Botswana, Tanzania and Niger, have taken measures to curb the trade in donkey skins and prohibit the export of donkey skins.
In Kenya, donkey slaughter is legal, but in a recent report by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization, it was noted that if donkeys continue to be slaughtered and sold, the local donkeys will become extinct within 4 years.
The massive import of donkey skins has also hit China's donkey trading market. At its peak, domestic donkey skins were 3,000 yuan per piece, while in recent years, the price of imported donkey skins has been maintained at 800 to 900 yuan. A large number of imported donkey skins from normal and abnormal channels enter the country, pulling the price of domestic donkey skins down to 30 yuan / kg, a donkey skin 30 to 40 kg, calculating the whole price is almost the same as the imported skin. This means that the added value of the donkey falls, and the price of the whole donkey falls. Sun Yujiang said that last year, nationwide, many farmers who raised and fattened donkeys failed to get benefits, and "the decline in the price of donkey skins is the fuse."
"Donkey Fire" is really fire
"Heavenly dragon meat, underground donkey meat", the value of donkeys in addition to skin, but also meat, donkey meat is considered to be high-protein, low-fat food. Driving south from Beijing, we will drive south to Hejian City, a hot spot for donkey meat, a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Cangzhou City in Hebei Province.
About 8 cm long, 5 cm wide, 3 cm thick, golden in appearance, crispy and burning, cut open with a knife in the middle, filled with chopped donkey meat, plus a bit of skin jelly that has been soaked in the donkey meat soup for a long time and made of sweet potato flour - stewed seeds as a supplementary food, the authentic hejian donkey meat fire meal is ready.
A "Kung Fu Donkey Meat Fire Shop" in Hejian City, Hebei Province. Photo / Reporter Du Wei
At noon, the Kung Fu Donkey Meat Fire Shop located at the intersection of Tuanjie North Avenue and Chengyuan East Road in Hejian City was overcrowded. Although summer is the off-season for donkey meat, there are still many tourists from other places who come here. Zhang Haitao, 41, is the founder of Kung Fu Donkey Restaurant, which has more than 300 franchise stores in the country. He is also the president of the Hejian Donkey Meat Burning Association and the inheritor of the provincial intangible cultural heritage project "Kung Fu Donkey".
Zhang Haitao is a native of Zunzuzhuang Township, Hejian City, which has always been a gathering place for donkey meat slaughter and processing. Grandpa used to do the business of donkey meat burning, and uncles, cousins, etc. were also engaged in this business.
The process of making donkey meat is very elaborate. First of all, the 167 pounds of noodles to be rolled out into a dough sheet of nearly 4 meters long and fifty or sixty centimeters wide, after oiling, the dough piece is horizontally and vertically longitudinally and thinly rolled, and then rolled into a cylinder and pulled into a potion, which is to make the layers of the dough cake more, which is also a big difference between the donkey meat fire in Hejian and the donkey meat fire in Baoding.
Another difference between the two schools is that after the Hejian people roll out the potion into a fiery pattern, they also roll out the upper and lower ends of the dough cake again and fold it back, which is also to increase the level. The fire produced in this way, 3 centimeters thick, can have fourteen or five layers.
The choice of donkey meat also has a doorway, Zhang Haitao said, when making donkey fire, to choose 7, 8 years old donkey, two or three years old donkey meat is not delicious, "the old donkey's meat, as long as it is cooked rotten, the older the more fragrant." Moreover, the fat, large donkey meat tastes better, "small donkeys, especially thin, the meat will be fishy." ”
The source of donkey meat is key. Like making ejiao, Zhang Haitao also faces the problem of donkey shortage. More than ten years ago, the local donkeys in Hejian were not difficult to find, and after that, they got donkeys from Zhangjiakou, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang, and became farther and farther away. In the past five years, due to the sharp decline in the number of donkeys in various places, it has become more and more difficult to find donkeys, and Zhang Haitao can only go to the Chifeng live donkey trading market in Inner Mongolia, where the supply is concentrated.
When buying a donkey, Zhang Haitao will make a weight assessment to determine how much meat the donkey can produce. The meat production rate of donkeys is about 50%, that is to say, a 300-pound donkey can only produce more than 100 kilograms of meat. At present, the wholesale price of one kilogram of raw donkey meat is more than 30 yuan, and a pound of raw donkey meat can produce six or two cooked donkey meat, so the wholesale price of one kilogram of cooked donkey meat is doubled to more than sixty yuan. Over the past decade, the price of donkey meat has also increased year by year. Taking the wholesale price of cooked meat as an example, from the original seventeen or eight yuan a catty, it increased at a rate of one to two yuan per year.
At the beginning of 2018, the donkey meat fraud incident in Hejian was exposed, and real donkey meat became a scarce product, making the price of cooked donkey meat rise by about 5 yuan. At present, the market sales price of a kilogram of cooked donkey meat is about 75 yuan. In the past ten years, the price of Zhang Haitao's kung fu donkey meat fire has also risen from the earliest four or five yuan per donkey to 7 yuan today, and the donkey meat contained in a donkey meat fire is about half two.
In the past ten years, the donkey fire industry in Hejian has employed more than 50,000 people, with an annual output value of 7.2 billion yuan and more than 20 independent trademarks. Zhang Haitao said there are more than 300 restaurants in Hejian City, of which 200 are donkey meat restaurants. In ten years, Zhang Haitao's store traffic has increased tenfold. One to three floors, 300 square meters, 9 private rooms, 14 scattered platforms, noon rush hour, there can be four or five overturns. According to his observation, the traffic of other stores has also about doubled.
Since the main production areas of donkey breeding in China are concentrated in remote mountainous areas such as the northwest, and the consumption of donkey meat is mainly in large and medium-sized cities in the eastern regions such as Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Henan, the consumption of donkey meat shows the characteristics of west donkey east transport and north donkey south transport. The price of donkey meat, Zhang Haitao said, in addition to the manifestation of its own value, is also related to the price of donkey skin. In 2018, the price of donkey skins fell, in order to ensure the basic price of a donkey, donkey meat became a "price bearer", which together with the seizure of fake donkey meat in the early 2018 river, became the driving force for the two increases in the price of donkey meat that year.
Donkey industry "live" road
In April last year, a media survey in Dong'a County found that a number of small ejiao manufacturers used cowhide, horse skin, and mule skin as raw materials to produce ejiao. Xinhua News Agency also published an article saying that based on the supply of raw materials for donkey skins, the annual output of ejiao should only be about 60% of the actual sales volume, and there may be nearly 40% of the fake raw materials mixed into the production link.
For ejiao enterprises, relying on their own and farmers' breeding, collecting skins at slaughtering points in various places, and delivering them to their homes after receiving the skins by middlemen are the main ways to obtain donkey skins. Donkey skin acquisition is carried out in a whole way, and donkey skins and other animal furs can be identified through characteristics such as coat color and ears. According to many industry insiders, one of the common tricks used by counterfeiters is to use other animal skins that are fake and sew donkey ears. For example, for mule skins, in addition to changing ears, the mane is cut short and the tail is trimmed, and the price of mule skins is only four to one-fifth of that of donkey skins.
A warehouse where a ejiao enterprise stores donkey skins in Dong'a County. Photo / Reporter Du Wei
In addition to the medicinal ejiao blocks made of pure donkey skin, the products of ejiao enterprises also have food with ejiao as the main raw material - ejiao cake and ejiao guyuan paste. Li Guihai, president of the Shandong Ejiao Industry Association, said that some ejiao products are doped with food thickeners, such as food-grade gelatin. In his view, the proportion of ejiao fraud is more than 40%, and the reason for this is the lack of mandatory standards and norms in the entire industry.
The authenticity of donkey meat is also distressing. In January 2018, the media exposed that black workshops in many townships in Hejian replaced donkey meat with horse meat, mule meat and pork. Zhang Haitao said that in real life, it is not so easy to distinguish between real and fake donkey meat, "No one can say that I can see the real and fake donkey meat at a glance, and no one can taste the real and fake donkey meat in one bite." He said that the general way to judge is that from the shape of the tendon meat and other shaped blocks, donkey meat is smaller than the mule and horse meat, the color, the color of the donkey meat is lighter, the mule and horse meat is black, the texture, the donkey meat is more compact and delicate, "but here is a very key factor, the old donkey and the pony can not be distinguished, the pony is more tender than the old donkey." ”
Zhang Haitao said that in the past two years, the situation of donkey meat fraud in hejian has been rectified. According to a local insider who did not want to be named, although there is less fake donkey meat, with the import of overseas donkey skins, frozen donkey meat has also flowed into the market, "there is no normal import channel", "frozen donkey meat is nearly twice as cheap as donkey meat slaughtered by live donkeys".
Wang Changfa believes that compared with donkey skin, the value of donkey meat has not been developed, and although the sales volume of donkey meat fire is large, it is still a low-end product in comparison. According to his understanding, enterprises and organizations, including the Donkey Industry Branch of the Shandong Meat Association and Dong'e Ejiao, are negotiating with Haidilao to develop donkey meat hot pot. But the problem is that Haidilao has more than 2,000 stores across the country, and it consumes 100,000 donkeys a year, and whether raw materials can be supplied is a problem. Moreover, if there is no large-scale breeding and slaughtering, the quality is not guaranteed.
Sun Yujiang is more optimistic about the development of the "donkey living economy" represented by donkey milk biological products. He said that the nutritional content of donkey milk is close to human milk and can be used as a substitute for breast milk. According to the calculation of 1.5 kg of donkey milk per donkey per day, the annual utilization of donkey milk can reach 225 kg.
At present, in the Kashgar region of Xinjiang, the purchase price of fresh donkey milk is 28 yuan / kg, and in Urumqi and Jinan, the market retail price is 80 to 100 yuan per kilogram. The price of freeze-dried milk powder is 4000~5000 yuan /kg. In this alone, a single nursing donkey can increase the benefit of about 5,000 yuan per year for farmers. But at present, the market recognition of donkey milk is not high. Wang Changfa believes that the future positioning of donkey milk may still be niche, and after some health care functions are confirmed, it can be used as a functional food.
For the breeding of donkeys, Wang Changfa suggested that it is necessary to increase the research on breeding technology and improve the breeding efficiency of donkeys, and large-scale breeding enterprises must develop the whole industrial chain, carry out deep processing of donkeys, and develop economic values such as donkey meat and donkey milk. "A donkey sells for 8,000 yuan normally, if slaughtered, it can sell for 20,000 yuan, after slaughtering, you have a restaurant, a donkey can become 50,000 yuan."
Under the premise of long breeding cycles and high cost of raising donkeys, it is not enough to support the entire donkey industry by slaughtering. Sun Yujiang believes that "if the development of the donkey industry is driven by eating meat and producing ejiao, China's donkey industry can only enter a dead end." ”