China dismisses synthetic substitute for animals' bile

[Guest guest]

Group fights to end bear farming

Kathleen E. McLaughlin, Chronicle Foreign Service Thursday, February 16,

2006

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/16/MNG0GH9JEP1.DTL

chengdu, China

-- Andrew's caretakers knew for some weeks their gentle giant wasn't well. They

clung to the hope it wasn't a fatal liver tumor like those that have already

killed nine of the moon bears rescued from bile farms and brought to this

refuge.

Known affectionately by his Chinese handlers as Anderloo, the giant black bear

was the first to be rescued by the AnimalAsia Foundation, a Hong Kong group

working to end the practice of keeping bears captive to milk their gallbladders

for traditional Chinese medicine.

 

Rescue Bear 0001, named Andrew by the Hong Kong philanthropist who donated $1

million to create the sanctuary, became the rescue effort's mascot, his story

recounted to hundreds of schoolchildren and statesmen across the globe. That he

had just one front paw, having lost most of his upper left limb to a farmer's

trap when he was a few years old, endeared him even more.

 

" Andrew held our gaze with those melting brown, trusting eyes of his, " said Jill

Robinson, founder of Animals Asia, recalling the bear's arrival at the refuge in

February 2000, in a cage so small he couldn't move.

 

The fight to save him came just weeks after the bear-farming debate took an

angrier turn when China's chief of wildlife conservation declared bear farming

humane, rejecting a European Union parliamentary resolution urging China to ban

the practice.