The government and NGOs work to change outdated and cruel bear bile extraction methods
　　
　　RESCUED: Jill Robinson, founder and CEO of Animals Asia Foundation, examines a newly rescued moon bear
　　It’s a subject that gets not only animal rights activists hot under the collar, but also the vast majority of caring people concerned about cruelty to animals. At a press conference in early 2006, the world’s attention was once again drawn to the fate of Asiatic black bears (or moon bears) in China, so long tortured in the cruel practice of bile extraction. Only this time the news was positive.
　　Wang Wei, Deputy Director of the Department of Wildlife Conservation under the State Forestry Administration, said on January 12 that illegally raising bears or extracting their bile in a cruel manner will invite severe penalties, but licensed bear farms will continue to exist in China for the time being. Although vague, the statement did signal some hope for the luckless bears.
　　
　　Cruel reality
　　
　　The bile liquid within bear gall bladders is classed as a bitter and cold medicine with the function of expelling heat in the body. According to Chinese medical experts, bear bile is mainly used to treat heat-related illnesses such as fevers, liver complaints and eye illnesses and bear bile medicines are still used in China, Japan, the two Koreas, Viet Nam and countries across the world with significant Asian populations.
　　The varied uses and high demand for bear bile have raised its value considerably. According to research in March 2004 by the Animals Asia Foundation (AAF), the retail price of farmed bear bile in China varies from province to province, while the wholesale price of bear bile powder is 4,700 yuan per kg.
　　The huge profits have attracted more and more people, especially those in poverty, to get involved in raising moon bears. This caused the number of bear farms to rocket in the 1980s and 1990s. According to government statistics, from 1984 to 1989, an average of 1,000 wild moon bears were captured annually for farming. By 1999 there were more than 7,000 moon bears on 247 farms throughout China. And with the numbers came the shocking conditions of captivity.
　　
　　TRAPPED: A moon bear is permanently locked in a small steel cage on a bear farm where it waits bile extraction
　　Today, although fewer in number, because of clampdown on small farms by the government in association with concerned nongovernmental organizations, many still exist where conditions are poor.
　　Zhu Ke, an official of the Moon Bear Rescue Center, located in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, told Beijing Review, in many bear farms, where the bears grow to three years of age, they would be kept, through their entire lives, in tiny cages measuring one meter wide by one meter high by two meters long. “Many bears are wounded and scarred from rubbing or hitting themselves against the bars of these metal cages. They are unable to stand or easily turn around,” he said.
　　Because of lack of movement, the bears’ muscles atrophy. “Even when these bears are rescued and set free, some of them cannot move or even stand on their feet,” Zhu said.
　　In fact, this lack of movement is only the beginning of the bears’ torment. The real aim of most bear farms is to extract bile from the helpless animals. Although bile extraction techniques have been improved, outdated cruel methods are still being used on many bear farms.
　　
　　Government intervention
　　
　　Facing this cruel reality, the government and many nongovernmental organizations have been trying to change the situation.
　　In 1988, the Wildlife Protection Law of China was enacted, prohibiting the commercial export of animal products, including bear bile. “The law has also made strict regulations on the techniques and conditions for nursing, exercising and breeding bears,” Wang Wei said.
　　During the 1990s, the Chinese Government made many efforts to rectify its bear farming industry and their abhorrent practices.
　　In 1997, the State Forestry Administra-tion issued a complete set of regulations on bear farming, covering the size of farms, bile extraction techniques and management of farms.
　　
　　NEW ARRIVALS: Five rescued moon bears, still in original cages, arrive at the Moon Bear Rescue Center in Chengdu
　　“These regulations and actions have given a scientific direction and rectification to China’s bear farming industry, forming a good base for today’s government work,” said Fan Zhiyong from the Endangered Species Import and Export Management Office under the State Forestry Administra-tion.
　　In late December 2004, the State Forestry Administration, along with four other central government agencies, issued a joint circular to outlaw the hunting of endangered wild bears and the abuse of bears on farms.
　　As a result, unlicensed and substandard bear farms have been shut down, reducing the number of farms from at least 480 in the early 1990s to 68 fully regulated ones, where farmed bears live in a suitable environment, according to Wang Wei, who added that techniques for extracting bile have been significantly improved.
　　“Current techniques and conditions for bear breeding and gall extraction are radically different from those used in the 1980s and 1990s,” he said, adding that gentler extraction methods have been introduced, including extraction through tubes developed from bear tissue, painless operation and the provision of suitable space for bear activities.
　　Nongovernmental organizations are another important force in improving the conditions of bear farms and rescuing bears in appalling condition.
　　The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has been working since 1993 to end the practice of bear bile extraction, working with governmental agencies and other organizations to close down the worst bear farms and established a bear sanctuary center, where care is provided for bears rescued from bear farms, in Panyu, Guangdong Province in 1994.
　　In July 2000, the China Wildlife Conservation Association, the Sichuan Provincial Forestry Department and the AAF signed an agreement on moon bear rescue, launching a campaign to rescue 500 moon bears within five years in Sichuan and promote the action across China in 10 years to ultimately eliminate bear farming, according to Jill Robinson, a Briton who established the AAF in Hong Kong in 1993.
　　In December of that year, the Moon Bear Rescue Center was established through the sponsorship of Robinson. With the joint efforts of the Sichuan Provincial Forestry Department and the AAF, a total of 198 bears have been rescued from bear farms, with 162 of them living in the rescue center.
　　The establishment of the Moon Bear Rescue Center and the rescue campaign have also created greater public awareness concerning the plight of the bears. “It’s a great chance for us to develop greater public awareness about animal welfare and conservation, bears in particular,” Robinson said.
　　According to her, a long-term future project of the Moon Bear Rescue Center is to build a planned education village to enable visitors to learn about animal welfare and conservation in general, as well as speaking at schools to raise students’ awareness.
　　The IFAW has built an education center with a collection of moon bear information and the cruelty they are suffering, in the Panyu bear sanctuary center, which now also acts as a window to advocate animal welfare policies to the public.
　　
　　Bile alternatives
　　
　　Promoting herbal alternatives to bear bile is another aim of the IFAW and the AAF. “Our ultimate aim is to search for herbal alternatives for bear bile and to eliminate bear bile farming,” Robinson said.
　　For the past 3,000 years, bear bile has been regarded as an indispensable ingredient of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). According to Wang Wei, bear bile is now used in 123 medicines. Experts at the Chinese Association of Medicine, Philosophy and Earthcare, however, have refuted the rumor that bear bile has an efficacy not matched by any other substitute, pointing out that herbal alternatives have long been proven to be as effective as the bile.
　　At the Moon Bear Rescue Center, a special herb garden has been designated for research and cultivation of herbal alternatives to bear bile.
　　Commissioning and funding a group of TCM experts and researchers to find substitutes for bear bile, the IFAW launched its own “herbal garden” to demonstrate the great variety of medically accepted herbal alternatives to bear bile in 2004.
　　A report by the Chinese Association of Medicine and Philosophy and Earthcare has declared that there are at least 54 herbal alternatives to bear bile, including Chinese ivy stem, dandelion, chrysanthemum, common sage and rhubarb.
　　Other TCM experts also support the contention that herbal and synthetic alternatives are just as effective as bear bile.
　　“I have been a practitioner of Chinese medicine for over 40 years and have never used bear bile. Today we have over 70 herbal alternatives and synthetic medicines, which have the same efficacy as bear bile, so that there is no need to use bear bile any longer,” said Liu Zhengcai, a professor at the China Association of Health-Protection Food.
　　Zu Shuxian, a professor at Anhui Medical University, also believes that some herbs can easily substitute for bear bile and its use is absolutely meaningless today.
　　With joint efforts of the government, NGOs and TCM specialists, great strides are being made to improve the condition of bear farms, techniques of bear bile extraction and rescuing bears in danger.
　　“Considering both the needs of medical treatment and the protection of bears, we can find a win-win solution for sure,” Wang Wei said.
　　
　　Moon Bears
　　
　　Asiatic black bears are often affectionately called “moon bears” because of the beautiful yellow crescent moon found on their chests. They have thick, shaggy black fur, huge round ears and short, strong claws that enable them to climb with ease. At up to 220 kg, males typically grow to approximately twice the size of females, which weigh 60 to 130 kg in the wild. However, the females can often be dominant and can usually be distinguished by the thicker ruff of fur around their neck.
　　Moon bears are found right across the Asian continent from Iran to Japan, mainly living at high altitudes and preferring heavily forested areas. Moon bears are one of the eight bear species in the world and are listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Appendix I-the most critical category of endangerment. At present, there remain only about 25,000 moon bears in the world and over 10,000 of those live within the territory of China, according to data provided by Animals Asia Foundation, a Hong Kong-based charity.
　　
　　Painful Bile Extraction Methods
　　
　　It was only in the past 20 years that countries in Asia began to search for an alternative to protect moon bears from being killed for their bile and other body parts. In the early 1980s, a new method of extracting bile from living bears was developed in North Korea. In 1983, Chinese scientists imported this technique from North Korea.
　　According to the Animals Asia Foundation, the most original method of bile extraction is to embed a latex catheter, a narrow rubber pipe, under the bear’s skin and surgically attach it to the gall bladder. In this way, the farmer can extract the bile through the end of the rubber pipe, which exits the skin at the top of the bear’s thigh. The Moon Bear Rescue Center has received a number of bears with these “old-fashioned” latex catheters. The main problem with the latex catheter technique is that it became easily clogged with bile granules and other foreign matter and is therefore not an effective extraction method. In the mid-1980s, this technique was phased out.
　　The metal jacket technique followed. Here a rubber pipe connects to a fluid bag inside a metal box, held in place under the bear’s abdomen by a metal jacket. The bile drains through the rubber pipe into the protected fluid bag and is emptied approximately every two weeks by the farmer.
　　This brutal method was found on the two bears rescued from a bear farm in Tianjin in January 2004, said Zhe Ke, an official of the Moon Bear Rescue Center in Sichuan Province. In addition to the pain and risk of infection, the metal jackets, which weigh in excess of 10 kg each, would also cause massive hair loss and painful skin irritation.
　　The metal jacket system was followed by a metal catheter technique. Here a six-inch catheter is surgically implanted into the bears’ gall bladder, allowing farmers to milk the bears each day. During milking, the bears are tempted by food to lie flat on the bottom of the cage. Often, a metal grid is lowered on top of the bears to force them to remain in this flat position until the farmers finish. In many cases, the grid has never been raised.
　　“We have been horrified to receive many bears in cages with metal grids rusted permanently in the lowered position, pinning the bears flat to the bottom of the cage for years on end,” Zhu said.
　　In recent years, Chinese bear farmers have introduced a new free-dripping method of bile extraction. This method uses no catheter but sees a permanent hole or fistula carved into the bear’s abdomen and gall bladder, from which bile freely drips out.
　　During this type of bile extraction, the bears undergo the same treatment as the metal catheter method of extraction. As with the metal catheter technique, the bear is tempted by food or honey water to lie on the bottom of the cage and then the farmer forces an unhygienic tube into the gall bladder, breaking the membrane that has grown over the hole. This allows bile to flow directly into a bowl placed beneath. The damage caused by bile leaking back into the abdomen, together with infection from the permanently open hole, is as bad as the former methods and causes a high mortality rate on the farms.
　　“Unbelievably, our veterinary director has discovered during her surgical assessments that several of the bears we have rescued have been victims of every single method of bile extraction,” Zhu told the author.
　　In January 2005, the Animals Asia Veterinary Team discovered that a new technique of bile extraction is now being tested on bears. Known as “fake-free dripping,” farmers insert a permanent, perspex catheter into the fistula, which is almost impossible to see unless the abdomen is shaved and examined close-up. This new technique is against China’s current regulations on bear farming.
　　“Harm to the bear’s spirit is more cruel than that to its body. Every time I see those rescued bears who have suffered such pains and gone crazy, I feel so sorry and ashamed for humankind,” Zhu said.

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