HK: AAF statement in response to report on bear farming in China

[Guest guest]

AAF statement in response to report on bear farming in China

 

Animals Asia Foundation Founder and CEO Jill

Robinson said in response to an Agence France

Presse (AFP) news report issued yesterday that

while the number of bear farms in China may have

decreased, the total number of incarcerated bears had probably increased.

 

Ms Robinson said the industry had become

increasingly large-scale, with smaller farms

consolidating into highly lucrative intensive-farming operations.

 

She said other claims in the report – that new

surgical technologies had been adopted to reduce

the pain felt by the bears during bile extraction

and that bears were no longer confined in small

cages or in iron jackets – were simply untrue.

 

When the farmers claim that the latest method of

bile extraction – the free-drip method – is

humane, they are not telling the truth.

 

The technique, which is permitted by government

regulations, involves the farmer carving a hole

into the bear’s abdomen and gall bladder for the

bile to drip out. “The farmer keeps the weeping

wound open by poking unsterilised instruments

into it and often has to perform further crude

surgery to open a hole that is obviously trying to heal,” Ms Robinson said.

 

“Clearly this is agonising for the bears. We have

lost count of the number of rescued bears that

arrive at our hospital with bile, blood and pus

pouring from infected wounds. It is a fact of

medical science that a 10-year-old would

understand – a hole gouged into the abdomen and

gall bladder of a wild and warm-blooded mammal can never be classed as humane.”

 

Only this week we euthanised yet another rescued

bear on our surgery table after discovering she

was riddled with liver tumours – including one

weighing over 5.5kgs,” Ms Robinson said.

 

She invited officials to visit Animals Asia’s

Moon Bear Rescue Centre in Chengdu, Sichuan

province to learn the truth about the farmers’ claims.

 

She said thousands of highly endangered Moon

Bears – one of China’s flagship species – were

still being kept in tiny “coffin-sized” cages

without access to water and deliberately starved

of food to increase the amount of bile they produced.

 

“Bear bile is a highly corrosive acid and the

impact of leakage from the gall bladder is that

hundreds of Moon Bears are dying on the farms,

their body parts quietly sold off on the black

market and more then entering the trade via dubious routes.”

 

Ms Robinson said wild bears were still being

trapped illegally and captive-bred cubs were

taken from their mothers at just three months of

age. In the wild, they remained together until

the cubs were two to three years old.

 

“Thousands of visitors to the Animals Asia

sanctuary in China are horrified with the cruelty

inflicted upon their country's charismatic Moon

Bears – particularly given the fact that bear

bile is not an essential medicine and can easily

be replaced with synthetics or herbs.

 

This industry is driven by the dollar and those

making money from the suffering of these majestic

mammals are denying the wishes of the majority who want it to end.

 

“Bear farming kills bears; it does nothing to

save their lives in captivity or their species in the wild,” Ms Robinson said.

 

Ends

 

To learn more about Animals Asia Foundation,

please visit <http://www.animalsasia.org/>www.animalsasia.org.

 

For more information and for high-resolution photos, please contact:

 

Angela Leary – AAF Media Manager at

<alearyaleary; tel: 9042-7740

 

 

 

Animals Asia’s Moon Bear Rescue – Background

 

Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) is a Hong

Kong-headquartered charity that runs a number of

projects aimed at finding long-term solutions to

problems of animal cruelty, including the rescue

of 10,000 Moon Bears from cruel bile farms in China and Vietnam.

 

AAF’s Moon Bear Rescue project involves rescuing

suffering and endangered Asiatic black bears from

cruel bile farms in China and bringing them to

its sanctuary in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The

bears (known as Moon Bears because of the golden

crescents on their chests) can spend up to 20

years in coffin-sized cages where they are milked

daily for their bile, often through crude, filthy

catheters. They are also milked through

permanently open holes in their abdomens. This is

the so-called “humane” free-dripping technique.

It is the only legal method of bile extraction in

China, but still causes constant pain and the slow death of the bears.

 

The bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine,

even though cheap and effective herbal and

synthetic alternatives are readily available.

 

The ambitious bear rescue project was hatched in

1993 when Animals Asia’s Founder and CEO, Jill

Robinson, a Briton working in animal welfare in

Asia, walked onto a bear bile farm in China. “It

was a torture chamber, a hell hole for animals.

They literally couldn’t move, they couldn’t stand

up, they couldn’t turn around,” she says.

 

In July 2000 after years of lobbying and

negotiating, Robinson signed a landmark agreement

with the Chinese authorities to rescue 500 Moon

Bears and work towards ending the barbaric

practice of bear bile farming. To date, more than

215 farmed Moon Bears have been rescued and

brought to AAF’s Moon Bear Rescue Centre.

 

The farmers are compensated financially so they

can either retire or set up in another business.

Their licences are taken away permanently.

 

Animals Asia has also signed an agreement with

the Vietnamese authorities to rescue 200 bears

there and is currently completing construction of a sanctuary near Hanoi.

 

The foundation is working towards an eventual ban

on bear farming throughout Asia.

 

For more information, please visit

<http://www.animalsasia.org/>www.animalsasia.org

 

 

ORIGINAL AFP NEWS REPORT PUBLISHED IN THE CHINA POST (Taiwan)

 

China closes hundreds of bear farms: government

 

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

 

BEIJING -- China has closed more than 400 bear

breeding farms as it steps up efforts to protect

animal rights, the government said Tuesday. The

number of bear breeding farms, which typically

raise the animals to collect their bile for

medicine, has decreased to 68 from more than 480

in the 1990s, said Zhu Lieke, vice minister of

the State Forestry Administration.

New surgical technologies have been adopted to

reduce the pain felt by the bears during the

process of extracting the bile, replacing such

traditional practices as confining the bear in a

small iron cage or iron jacket, he said.