In the billion-dollar human hair trade, ponytails are cut from women in the East and sold to women of the West.

It’s an unregulated industry built on exploitation with hundreds of thousands of kilometres of hair - enough to wrap around the world many times over - moving freely and silently across continents.

Most of the hair is grown in China and during the manufacturing process it is disinfected, steamed, boiled, dyed and sewn. Each step further erases any traces of its original owner.

By the time it’s sold in New Zealand as perfectly packaged extensions, the women behind the hair have been rendered invisible.

Shelley Saunders, for example, has never given the owner of her extended hair a thought, despite wearing it for six months.

Sitting in a salon in Royal Oak having 60cm ombre extensions re-taped into her roots, 24-year-old Saunders says she’s “honestly never thought about” the origins of her hair.

“The best way for me to explain it is that I never actually think about the cow when I eat a burger.”

Saunders, a school teacher, says she loves her extended locks: “The feel of it being long and totally natural.” Her students have “no idea” it’s not her own.

The only downside to extensions, Saunders says, is that her boyfriend can’t run his fingers through her hair because it’s chock-a-block with tape.

The extensions being woven into Saunders’ scalp are part of the average $2.5 million worth of human hair New Zealand imports every year - the equivalent of about 62,500 ponytails.

Hair extensions can cost anywhere from $700 up to $2000 per head in New Zealand. A ponytail grown over three years in China might fetch its owner $80, if they’re lucky.

Last month, the New Zealand Herald travelled hundreds of kilometres across China, the world’s biggest exporter of human hair, to investigate who is behind this booming industry and why they’ve been condemned for “harvesting human bodies for profit.”

In a small, rural village, we found 14-year-old Qingwen Liu.