If you are planning to buy your donkey meat on Amazon this Christmas, you may have to look elsewhere. The world’s largest online retailer says it has stopped selling edible donkey in California, WIRED has learned.
Amazon’s new policy kicked in after months of negotiations with the Center for Contemporary Equine Studies, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting horses. In February, the center filed a legal complaint alleging that Amazon’s sale and distribution of products that contain ejiao—an ingredient made with donkey skin that’s popular in health supplements—violates a California animal-welfare law called the Prohibition of Horse Slaughter and Sale of Horsemeat for Human Consumption Act.
Horsemeat, the center argues, includes donkeys.
As part of a settlement to that complaint, Amazon has agreed to stop selling products that contain ejiao in California. According to court documents, Amazon denies any wrongdoing and disputes the center’s allegations. But in an interview with WIRED, Corey Page, an attorney with the law firm Evans & Page who represented the center in the lawsuit, speculates that “Amazon doesn’t settle cases it thinks it can win.”
“This is a signal that if anyone is doing this, they are doing something illegal,” he says. “If a company like Amazon decides it needs to stop sending products and promoting products that violate California law, then all other retailers should do the same.”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment or questions about its new donkey-meat policy.
According to the settlement, Amazon has agreed to “undertake reasonable best efforts” to implement “internal measures” that prevent the sale of products containing ejiao “so that such products will not be available for sale to California addresses.”
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