About Animals Asia’s mission to end bear farming

Animals Asia Foundation, a Hong Kong-headquartered charity founded in 1998 by Jill Robinson MBE, is working to end bear bile farming in Asia. We work closely with the Chinese and Vietnamese governments, lobbying for laws to end the cruel practice, convincing provincial leaders to close down the farms in their provinces, and promoting herbal alternatives to bear bile.
 
Through our flagship campaign, the Moon Bear Rescue, we’re saving hundreds of suffering, endangered moon bears, sun bears and brown bears from the cruel trade and bringing them to our sanctuaries in China and Vietnam.

For thousands of years, bears were killed in the wild for their bile and gall bladders to treat “heat-related” illnesses, such as liver and eye complaints. But in the 1980s, entrepreneurs in Korea found ways to keep the bears alive and milk them regularly for their lucrative bile. The practice quickly spread to China and Vietnam, where more than 15,000 bears remain on farms. Today in China, bear bile is used extensively in hospitals, with pharmaceutical companies actively promoting bile products to doctors. It is also used in tonics as a cure-all for everything from hangovers to haemorrhoids. Traditional medicine practitioners in both China and Vietnam prefer safer herbal alternatives.

In China, the bears can spend up to 30 years in coffin-sized cages where they are milked daily for their bile, often through crude, filthy catheters. The process is agonising. The bears are also milked through permanently open holes in their abdomens. This is the so-called “humane” free-dripping technique. It is the only permitted method of bile extraction in China, but still causes constant pain and the slow death of the bears.
More information can be found at the following link; http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?UID=FFFUD5EP49V5

In Vietnam, the bears are anaesthetised with the illegal drug, ketamine, removed from their small cages, restrained with ropes and jabbed in the abdomen with unsterile four-inch needles until the gall bladder is found. The bile is extracted with a catheter and medicinal pump. The process is excruciating for the bears.  Please visit the following link for further details;  http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?UID=MSQUCP9JN8J4

Animals Asia is attacking the bear bile trade at all levels. Our funding of bear population studies in Sichuan province is showing that bears are being poached for their gall bladders and other body parts and that a high priority for the Chinese government must now be to cut off this illegal trade. Similarly, our groundbreaking work with pathologists in China and Vietnam highlights the terrible impact on the health of the bears as a result of bile extraction — and is now showing the potential impact on human health as consumers are made ill and even dying from consuming the contaminated bile from such sick and diseased bears.
http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?UID=7QWRDIAB021

With the support of celebrities and the media, our public education programmes in China are garnering significant support for closing down the farms and giving bears that have suffered for decades their freedom. Traditional medicine doctors joining us in China and Vietnam are now calling out for the farms to close, recognising that bear bile is not only damaging the health of bears and people, but damaging the reputation of a discipline that has harmony with nature at its core. http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?UID=9D6EY6MLQ8E6

Twenty of China’s 31 provinces are now bear-farm free and, as we continue to engage with provincial leaders across China, the momentum is gathering for others to follow. Our priority is to escalate our public education programmes, giving voice to the increasing number of Chinese people who are calling on their government to protect and help their endangered bears.

Our rescue of caged bears in both China (277) and Vietnam (88) continues to grow, giving permanent sanctuary, freedom and hope to so many bears currently suffering on the farms and providing vital evidence to fight this industry until the very last farm is closed.