INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A bear enjoys the literal fruit of his efforts at mealtime.Phung Thuong, Vietnam: Inside a row of rusting
cages, 15 adult moon bears are imprisoned in varying degrees of apathy and distress
Some lie on their backs in the tiny enclosures, unable even to stretch out; other loll their heads or chew listlessly at the bars of the
cage in tortured, repetitive motions.Every few days, the bears will be sedated, a needle will be inserted into their gall bladders and bile
extracted to be sold as a cure for anything from hemorrhoids to a hangover
More than 20,000 bears are kept, most in appalling conditions, across eastern Asia to satisfy an age-old obsession with the medicinal and
magical power of products culled from exotic animals.Yet there is a ray of hope for some of these bears, as public awareness of animal
protection and welfare gradually rises across Asia.Last year, Vietnam's government promised to close down all its bear farms by 2022,
following on from a promise by the country's traditional Chinese medicine community to stop prescribing bear-bile products by 2020.That
means bear farming is very clearly coming to an end in Vietnam, "once and for all," said Jill Robinson, founder of Animals Asia
"I think they realized that both internally and internationally, bear-bile farming was becoming a very unpalatable subject."There has been
progress as well in South Korea, where the government completed a sterilization program on captive bears last year as part of an effort to
phase out farming.Outside these bright spots, however, the picture is much grimmer
China is the center of the industry and of demand for bear bile products
Bear farming remains legal in China, and here at least 10,000 bears are still kept in cages on nearly 70 farms. Bears play in their
enclosure at Animals Asia's Vietnam Bear Sanctuary.Asian black bears - closely related to the American black bear - live in mountains and
forests from Japan to China and across the Himalayas to India
They are known as moon bears because of a white marking on their chests, roughly in the shape of a crescent moon.The first known record of
the use of bear bile for its medicinal properties comes from a Tang Dynasty document that dates to A.D
But the idea of farming living bears to extract bile originated in North Korea in the early 1980s before rapidly spreading to China, Vietnam
and Laos.Studies show that the acid contained in bile does have medical benefits in dissolving gallstones or treating some liver disease, as
well as some anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties
But in recent years, it has also been used as an (ineffective) cancer cure or as a general tonic - a draft of rice wine mixed with bear
bile, or steeped in a bear's paw, might stave off a hangover, some say. A worker at Animals Asia's Vietnam Bear Sanctuary places food
around the enclosure for the bears to seek out.In Vietnam, though, the industry is on the retreat.The government banned the poaching of wild
animals in 1992 but allowed bear farming to continue - even though the industry was being almost exclusively supplied from wild
populations.In the years that followed, rising public pressure had an effect
In 2005, shocked by how widespread bear farming had become, Vietnam outlawed the extraction of bile while allowing farms to keep existing
animals so they weren't just slaughtered
The number of bears has fallen from a peak of more than 4,500 to just over 1,000 today, experts say.The village of Phung Thuong outside
Hanoi is where the industry grew up in Vietnam, and is the biggest holdout today: In an area of just a few square miles, and among a
population of 15,000 people, there are about 195 bears in metal cages, many in small compounds straddling the main road. A bear lies in its
cage at a bile farm outside Hanoi.Everyone knows that these farms still extract bile, says Tuan Bendixsen, Vietnam country head of Animals
"It's obvious," he said.Otherwise, why would farmers keep the bears aliveBear farmers have the biggest houses and the fanciest cars in the
village.Indeed, as The Washington Post visited one roadside farm, a tray of small brown bottles used to contain and sell bear bile was on
the floor in plain view - until a Vietnamese forestry ranger, who is supposed to police the farms, sheepishly picked it up and carried it
into a back room, away from prying eyes.North of Hanoi, it is a different story at a bear sanctuary run by Animals Asia in Tam Dao National
Bears rescued from farms arrive here with immense psychological and physical problems, some too weak to walk or climb after lifetimes in
Others have lost limbs from the metal traps used to capture them; some are blind because of stress-induced hypertension. Just steps away
from the owner's home, bears are held in a row of cages.Many have to be gradually coaxed out of confined spaces to get used to their new
freedoms.Today, 175 recovering bears swim in pools, climb ladders and platforms, play gently with each other or stretch out in the shade
Three times a day, workers place vegetables all across their enclosures for the bears to forage and find in an important part of their
mental stimulation.But campaigners are struggling to replicate their Vietnam success in China.There, bile extracted from bears, in processes
involving considerable pain, infection and disease, is baked into powder and sold in a range of products - including eye gel and toothpaste
- freely available in pharmacies.Polls show that public opinion in China overwhelmingly deems bear bile extraction to be cruel and supports
But while China has moved to outlaw the trade in ivory, for example, international efforts to convince it to end bear-bile farming may have
boomeranged. At an Animals Asia event, a traditional-medicine doctor consults villagers on alternatives to using bear bile to treat their
ailments."From the beginning, this issue became politically sensitive in China," said Toby Zhang, who has campaigned to end bear farming for
"It became about foreigners coming to China to blame Chinese people for doing something.It is an example of the tightrope that animal
welfare groups have to walk as they try to effect change in China without stepping on some very sensitive toes
A 2006 declaration by the European Parliament, calling on the Chinese government to end bear bile farming, for example, merely served to
provoke an angry defense of the industry from the State Forestry Administration."The Chinese government has a bad habit: When they
understand something is wrong, they will change - unless it's pointed out by foreigners," Zhang said.Those sensitivities were exploited by
the industry to discredit the campaign to end bear farming, unfairly portraying it as acting in the interests of multinational drug
companies out to seize market share from Chinese rivals.The industry was also boosted when President Xi Jinping threw his weight behind the
domestic and global expansion of traditional Chinese medicine, calling it a "treasure of the Chinese nation."When it came to ivory, the
Chinese government realized that elephant-poaching efforts to satisfy Chinese demand were damaging its image in Africa, a continent where it
is keen to increase its influence
On bears, it has dug in its heels.In 2013, Chinese wildlife groups generated enough public pressure to force Fujian Guizhentang
Pharmaceutical to abandon an IPO to raise funds to expand the bear-farming industry
Since then, though, the Chinese media has been warned away from the subject, experts say.Scientists at Shenyang University in northeast
China created a synthetic alternative to bear bile more than two decades ago, but failed to get approval from the China Food and Drug
Administration.The Development Research Center of the State Council, a government think tank, issued a report in 2016 calling for the
industry to be gradually closed down by 2035
Faced with an internal backlash, that report was soon deleted from the organization's website.In March, a member of China's National
People's Congress, the country's largely rubber-stamp parliament, introduced a proposal calling for bear farming to be phased out by
2035.Shi Minghai, president of the Buddhist Association of Hebei Province, said that China should take a lead from Vietnam and South Korea
to end an industry that is damaging the country's international image.The proposal, not the first of its kind, has yet to gain much
traction.In Vietnam, the bear-bile industry was partly a victim of its own success - as production rose, the price dropped
And as the price dropped, people began to consider bear bile less valuable."When I first took bear bile, it wasn't from a farm," said
48-year-old Hoang Thi Nga, seeking herbal medicine for her bad back at a mobile clinic run by Animals Asia in Phung Thuong
"Bile from bears kept in a cage is not as effective as bile from bears in the wild."In China, though, a multimillion-dollar bear-farming
industry is continuing to thrive, and has so far outmaneuvered its critics.---Liu Yang in Beijing contributed to this report.(This story has
not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
