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The Unbearable Trade in Bear Parts and Bile

There are about 7,000 bears on bear-bile farms in China. The captive animals are used to supply the voracious Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) market. Bear bile has been an ingredient in TCM for thousands of years, but intensive bear farming only came into existence in the 1980s when China's supply of wild bears began running low. The farms, however, have created a new set of problems.

Milking

Usually bile is extracted from the bears' gallbladders twice a day through a surgically implanted tube. The process, called "milking," produces from .338 to .676 oz. (10–20 ml.) of bile each time. Milking is clearly painful for the bears, who are often seen moaning and chewing their paws during the process.

Sometimes the farmers just push a hollow steel stick through a bear's abdomen, and the bile runs into a basin under the cage. Surgery to insert the tube or stick is seldom performed by veterinarians (very few bear farms employ them). Roughly half of the bears die from infections or other complications.

Cages

On most bear bile farms, the bears are housed in a cage that is about 2.6 feet x 4.2 feet x 6.5 feet—so small that these 110- to 260-pound animals can barely sit up or turn around. The bars pressing against their bodies leave scars, some as long as four feet. Some bears have head wounds from banging them against the bars. Many of the bears have broken and worn teeth from biting the bars.

Cubs and Older Bears

Captive-bred cubs are taken from their mothers at three months. (In the wild, they have been observed staying with their mothers for up to 18 months.) Infant mortality is high. Captive mothers often eat their young, a behavior attributed to the stress of captivity because it seldom occurs in the wild. Some farms train cubs to perform in circuses (riding a bicycle, boxing, or walking a tightrope) until they are about 18 months old. Milking of the gallbladder begins at three years.

Once they stop producing bile (between five and ten years of age), bears are either allowed to die from starvation or illness, or they are killed so the farm can sell their paws (one quoted price was $250 each) and gallbladders ($150 each).
 

"Model" Farms

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) sent investigators to 11 bear farms in China. At two model Chinese government farms, WSPA investigators were told that a smaller cage was used for the twice daily milking, but a cage large enough to allow the bear to stand and turn around was used the rest of the time. Still, practically all the bears had injuries from rubbing against bars.

Bear Bile—the Wonder Drug

Bile acid—ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA)—has been popular in TCM for about 3,000 years. Unfortunately for them, bears produce more of it than any other mammal. Bile is excreted by the liver and stored in the gallbladder, from which it is released into the stomach to help digest food. Bear bile is marketed as a treatment for a staggering array of human maladies, from cardiac illness to impotence to sore eyes. You can buy it in almost any form: pills and powders, ointments, lozenges, wines, and shampoos. But some practitioners of TCM use herbal and synthetic alternatives to bear bile that are less expensive and more readily available.

China's Market

In 1999, a Chinese official reported that 7,002 Asiatic black bears were being held on 247 farms in China. (China is the major source of farmed bear bile. According to the Animals Asia Foundation, there are 300 Asiatic black bears on bile farms in Vietnam, but South Korea has now banned bear-bile farming entirely.) From these bears, "farmers" extracted more than 15,430 lbs. (7,000 kg) of bile. With the support of the government, the Chinese bear-bile industry is an aggressive marketer. For instance, when consumption of traditional products declined, the industry started pushing bile-containing wines, lozenges, teas, and shampoos.
 

Species at Risk

There are eight species of bear in the world. All but the giant panda are threatened by the trade in gallbladders and bile products. The species most targeted is the Asiatic black bear, classified as endangered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Because Asiatic black bears are listed on CITES Appendix I, it is illegal for China to engage in international trade in their parts. But it's impossible to tell whether a gallbladder or bile has been taken from an Asiatic black bear or from an American black bear, a species that can be internationally traded. So Asiatic black bear parts are slipping into the international market disguised as parts from their American relatives.

The Threat to Wild Bear Populations

It's no secret that products from wild bears are sold in China. Although the Chinese government claims that captive breeding is successful, bear farms regularly restock with wild bears. The farms pay the equivalent of $280 to $400 for a wild-caught cub—as much as ten times the monthly wage of a restaurant worker.

It's hard to get a fix on how many bears are living in the wild in China. In 1997, the Ministry of Forestry reported the number was 46,530. By 1999, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated there were fewer than 20,000. The decline of Asiatic black bear populations in China has endangered other bear species: wild bears are being killed for parts and viscera throughout Asia, North America, and South America.

Smuggling

Despite international laws protecting bears, the illegal trade in bear bile and gallbladder thrives. There's no lack of smugglers willing to move the products across national borders. Smugglers have been caught with whole gallbladders dipped in chocolate (attempting to pass them off as chocolate figs) or packed in coffee to obscure the smell. WSPA investigators tell of bile farm owners admitting to illegally exporting products to Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Singapore.
 

CITES

All bear species are listed under CITES Appendices, either on Appendix I (no international trade is allowed) or Appendix II (regulated international trade is allowed with proper permits). The differing international legal statuses for bear parts in trade, combined with the impossibility of distinguishing between species parts, make it difficult to enforce national or international bear-protection laws.

Despite the prevalence of illegal trade in bear gallbladders and bile products, China promotes the idea that it can maintain a bear farming industry that is both sustainable and humane. To that end, the CITES Management Authority in China created a list of standards for bear farms. The idea is that farms meeting the standards could be registered with CITES and allowed to trade bear products internationally.

Five Hundred Bears to Sanctuary

In July 2000, the Chinese government signed an agreement to deliver (over five years) 500 bears to the Animals Asia Foundation, which would provide them with veterinary care, rehabilitation, and sanctuary. The bears would be taken from the most primitive farms in the Sichuan province, which the government would then shut down. In the following ten years, the program would be expanded into other provinces. The estimated cost for building a sanctuary and caring for the first 500 bears for the first year is more than $3 million.

Some consider the agreement with Animals Asia to be nothing more than a public relations maneuver, intended to mitigate the fact that the Chinese government is clearly committed to bear-bile farming and is, in fact, pushing to legitimize the industry. Critics point out that the farms from which the bears would be taken are merely the worst of the hundreds operating in the country. Furthermore, they say, the bears being turned over to Animals Asia are old bears who are no longer profitable.

The director of Animals Asia Jill Robinson, MBE, agrees that the animals being released into her custody are but "a small percentage" of the thousands suffering on bear farms in China. But she points out that, "They are also animals which have spent anywhere up to 22 years behind bars and desperately need help in the form of extensive veterinary care, physiotherapy and integration. For the first time, large numbers of farmed bears are, at last, seeing their freedom. This, and our work with the Chinese government and related authorities, is keeping bear farming in the public eye, while working continuously towards the goal of ending the practice once and for all."

The Bear Trade—Questions and Answers

What is the problem?

Demand for bear gallbladders, bile and paws has made bears more valuable dead than alive. The sum of saleable parts can make a dead bear worth in excess of $10,000. An average sized bear gallbladder commands as much as $3,400 in Asia. A single serving of bear paw soup in an exclusive restaurant in Asia can fetch as much as $1,400. Asian countries such as China and South Korea are the leading consumers of bear products.

Why are bear parts valued?

Bear gallbladders and bile are used in traditional medicine to treat a variety of illnesses including fever, liver disease, convulsions, diabetes, and heart disease. A person who eats bear paws is believed to acquire the strength and vigor of a bear, and the consumption of bear flesh in believed to enhance one's virility. Clinical research analyzing the medicinal properties of bear gallbladders indicates that they may be effective for treating a number of ills. However, other natural substances already accepted in traditional medicine, as well as synthetic substances, can be substituted.

Are bears threatened by the trade?

Yes. There are eight species of bears (brown bear, American black bear, Asiatic black bear, polar bear, giant panda, sloth bear, spectacled bear, and sun bear). Each of Asia's five bear species—the brown bear, the Asiatic black bear, the giant panda, the sun bear, and the sloth bear—has suffered from the effects of hunting for the Chinese medicinal trade, as well as from habitat destruction that threatens all the Earth's wildlife. With the exception of pandas, of which fewer than 600 exist in the wild, little is known about the population levels of any Asian bear species other than they are in decline.

While having relatively large populations, America's black and brown bears are increasingly being poached for the bear trade, as are Russia's brown bears on the Kamchatka peninsula. There is little evidence of the poaching of polar bears or South America's spectacled bear.

Aren't all bears protected from trade by international law?

No. Most species and populations of bears are listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which means that their international commercial trade is forbidden. However, some populations of the brown bear, as well as the American black bear and polar bear, are only on CITES Appendix II, which means international trade is legal and regulated by permit. Inconsistent CITES protections allow traders in Asia to illegally trade in the parts of endangered bears simply by falsely stating that the viscera comes from Appendix II bears. Customs officers cannot tell the difference between the gallbladders of Appendix I and II bears.

What about laws in countries that are major consumers of bear parts?

Taiwanese law bans the sale of bear parts, but the law is not enforced and bear gallbladders, bile, and paws are widely available. Chinese law allows the sale of bear bile extracted from live bears on government-sanctioned bear "farms" and bans the sale of other bear parts, but the laws are not enforced. South Korean and Japanese laws do not address the trade in bear parts.

What about China's government-sanctioned bear farms?

In the 1980s, China recognized that their supply of wild bears for use in traditional medicine was running out. Instead of trying to discourage the use of bears, China began experimenting with the extraction of bile from living, captive bears. According to Chinese officials, the bile produced by a single captive bear in one year is equal to that obtained by killing 44 wild bears; over a bear's five-year production span, 220 wild bears' lives are saved. Today, there are an estimated 7,000 bears on China's farms and the use of bear bile is increasing, as are the number of bears on farms.

But the extraction of bear bile, and incarceration of bears on farms, is horribly cruel. The bears are kept in tiny wire cages, so small that the animals often can not sit up or turn around. A catheter-like tube, or a surgical steel tap, is painfully inserted into their gallbladder from which the bile is extracted. Infections often develop where the bile leaks around the insertion. Many of these bears go crazy from the pain, boredom, and frustration. Moreover, bears continue to be removed from the wild to stock the farms, placing Asia's bear populations in further jeopardy.