Bear Bile Business Makes Its Way to SF and California

There is a front page story in the Monday, April 25, San Francisco Chronicle headed, "Freeing China's caged bile bears Animal activists aim to curtail trade in traditional remedy." Inside, on page 8, there is a related story headed, "State battles lucrative bear bile trade."

The paper has printed photos, such as one of a bear stuffed into a metal cage hardly the size of her body, which you can view on line at:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/04/25/MNGFECEIVO1.DTL&o=0
OR http://tinyurl.com/7e9ld

The front page story opens:

"Chengdu, China -- Jill Robinson's life was forever changed when she stole away from her tour group on a Chinese bear bile farm and descended a flight of stairs to a dark basement, where she saw the dim outlines of cages.

"'I actually didn't understand what I was seeing at first,' Robinson says. 'Then it made me sick to my stomach.'

"Dozens of bears, kept alive only for their bile, were trapped in cages so small they couldn't move, their bellies spiked with crude, dirty, often- infected devices to allow the farmers to "milk" their bile twice a day and sell the fluid secreted by the liver as medicine.

"Suddenly, one of the bears reached a paw out of its cage. Unaware that moon bears, an endangered Asian black bear species named for the yellow crescent on its chest, are among the most aggressive of bears, Robinson spontaneously grabbed the animal's paw and held it. She marvels that she still has her arm.

"'In years later, it has shaken me and made me really believe there was a message there,' she says.

"Now the soft-spoken Briton, who went on to found Animals Asia Foundation, based in Hong Kong, is pressing the Chinese government to ban bear farming outright before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and close down the farms where, according to the World Society for the Protection of Animals, 7,000 caged bears are being milked for their bile.

You can read the whole article on line at: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/25/MNGFECEIVO1.DTL
OR http://tinyurl.com/8cw93

The story directs readers to the Animals Asia website, http://www.animalsasia.com where you can learn more about the Moon Bear Rescue Center in Chengdu, and how you can help.

The Pg A8 story opens:

"The world's appetite for bear bile and bear parts extends to the Bay Area and has even led to the hunting and killing of California's wild bears, state officials and animal rights activists say.

"Lt. Kathy Ponting, field supervisor for the California Department of Fish and Game's undercover Special Operations unit, says game wardens regularly find black bear carcasses in the wild with only their gall bladders and paws cut away.

"When WildAid, an animal rights group based in San Francisco, sent an undercover investigator into Chinatown last year, two shopkeepers readily offered up vials in velvet-lined boxes with a picture of a bear on the lid, claiming the powdered bear bile was from farms in China, said Executive Director Peter Knights.

"One reason wild bear parts are prized is that some adherents of traditional Chinese medicine believe that by eating animal parts, they will take on the characteristics of the animal. Yet because California law bans the sale or purchase of bear parts -- with penalties ranging up to a $10,000 fine and three years in state prison -- the trade is clandestine and it is impossible to gauge the full extent of the problem.

"But in 2001, when the World Society for the Protection of Animals conducted a probe of traditional Chinese medicine shops in Canada and four U.S. cities -- Chicago, New York, Washington and San Francisco -- it found that 91 percent of the shops surveyed sold some form of bear part, including farmed bile powder, bile medicines and whole gall bladders."

You can read it on line at: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/25/MNG9ACEIJF1.DTL
OR http://tinyurl.com/cvllb

The stories provide a great opportunity for letters to the editor on a wide range of animal cruelty issues. Moon Bears are not the only animals that live in hideously small cages. We have animals used for food living in similar conditions in the US. Check out http://www.factoryfarming.com

The San Francisco Chronicle takes at letters [at] sfchronicle.com and advises "Please limit your letters to 200 or fewer words ... shorter letters have a better chance of being selected for publication."


(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. If you forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)