Gelatin is created by boiling skin, bones and tendons of various animals. Some popular animals used are cows, pigs and horses in America. In China, donkeys are popularly used as well. Gelatin is used as an herbal medicine called E Jiao (donkey hide gelatin) or as an encapsulation agent.
In order to get more information about gelatin production in China I contacted Animals Asia Foundation since Jill Robinson has been doing a lot of undercover work in China to help the moon bears in the bile farms. She informed me that donkeys are severely abused in China, especially in the live markets. This is the picture she painted for me from her first hand experience:
“Close by, truck after truck piled high with white goats begin arriving at the market, while donkeys are being dragged out of sheds and loaded into cages, trucked off to be slaughtered elsewhere. Frightened and exhausted, several have no strength to rise to their feet and the traders kick them in the stomachs and beat their backs with metal poles until they can stand the agony no more and rise on shaking legs. Even then, the abuse continues and the traders continue beating them and grabbing their tails, painfully twisting them into knots, and forcing the donkeys to climb up the metal ramps into the cages."
I contacted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to get further information. They informed me that animal abuse like what was described above is common practice in America as well as in China. It is not the exception to the rule like many people like to believe. There are no animal protection laws in China at all. Therefore, animal farms are legally allowed to treat their animals however they want with absolutely no legal recourse.
Since Chinese medicine and the food industry is a world wide business, demand is very high for these products. They have constant pressure to kill as many animals as possible and encourage their workers to be hasty and not take time to consider any shred of humanity in the act. Workers attempt to stun the animals by beating them with pipes or other heavy objects, electrocuting them, slitting their throats or driving a nail gun through their skull. Often times, the animals are not properly stunned and they are boiled alive in a vat of scalding water and then dismembered. Then, the skins are piled in large stacks and left to cure or putrefy for several weeks. Rats, mice and insects frequently infest the piles and create an unforgettable stench. A large container of acid disintegrates the skin, hairs, rats and their fecal matter to make a gel called “gelatin.”
E Jiao and gelatin is not necessary as there are many plant based alternatives. As for gelatin, there exists a large variety of substances which are vegan an which have the same properties as gelatine: Cellulose (Amid), Agar-Agar, Biobin, Guar, Xanthan, Carob fruit and others. (Unfortunately I do not know the exact english names, but maybe this will help you already.) So if you read on the ingredient list that gelatine is used, then you can be sure that this product is NOT vegan. But if one or more of the other mentioned subsances appear on the list, you can be sure that you can use them even as vegan.
If you do not want to use gelatin it is important to ask your herbal distributer if they encapsulate their herbs with gelatin. One popular company that uses primarily gelatin encapsulation is Blue Poppy although their Great Nature Classic line, granules and tinctures do not.
As for E Jiao, there are botanical substitutes. Even if I have to use a combination of botanicals in order to achieve the same effect, I will.
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