; and transporting children to school. (8) A report by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization said that 159,631 donkeys were slaughtered for their skins, 8.1 percent of the population, in 2018. Today, up to 1,000 donkeys a day can be slaughtered in Kenya alone, more than 300,000 a year. (9) Donkeys are regularly stolen and killed illegally solely for their skins. Moreover, donkeys are often stolen from families who depend on them for their livelihoods, and who are already struggling and living below the regional poverty line. (10) Where owners willingly sell their donkeys, they find that within months they are worse off financially than they would have been had they kept their donkeys. As prices constantly rise, it becomes impossible for these owners to go back into the market for a new donkey. (11) Although ejiao products are expensive, as the Chinese middle class has expanded, demand for ejiao products has exploded over the course of the last decade. As a result, the donkey population in China has collapsed by 76 percent since 1992. (12) Ejiao companies have set up donkey breeding schemes in China in an attempt to breed the species on a scale sufficient to meet local demand. But due to the long gestation period of donkeys, and the fact that they often only give birth once a year, breeders have not been able to satisfy demand from within China, which is why ejiao companies have turned to Africa and Latin America to satisfy demand for ejiao. (13) A crisis in donkey populations has been met with varied responses from affected countries. Bans in the trade of donkey skins in seven African countries have been poorly enforced or overturned. (14) As demand for ejiao continues unabated, donkey populations in lower-income countries continue to nosedive, despite governmental efforts to outlaw the trade. (15) A number of United States-based companies have already pledged to remove from the market all products containing ejiao. Despite this, far too many United States-based companies continue to sell