The Asians have been abusing bears for 2000 years. It is time for them to change their ways. They have been live-farming bear bile and using it as a medicine to treat various feeble ailments, including hemorrhoids and sore throats, bruises. It is an inhuman practice. The cages housing the bears are cramped and the creatures live out their days unable to move around, being drained of their bile. They are used as a sustainable resource. Despite the trade in bile being illegal, about 13 000 bears are currently being exploited on bile farms across Asia.
The wild animals – sun bears, moon bears and brown bears – are trapped or bred into captivity and kept in deplorable conditions. They are kept alone, captive and in pain. A permanent metal catheter is inserted through a cut in the abdomen into the gall bladder and the bile is bled off into a plastic bag, or the bear wears a ‘full jacket’ which extracts the bile into a box worn by the bear. All the extraction techniques are human inventions and they are barbaric. These bears have a life-expectancy of five years, after that their ‘productivity’ starts to wane and they are killed off for their whole gall bladders, their paws and their skulls, teeth. What kind of life is that to afford a fellow living, breathing creature? How can we call these people humans? Really. I battle to make the correlation. A human being should have a natural conscience. A human being should not have the desire to visit pain upon another living creature to procure profit. The trade in exotic animals is as heinous. I think the men behind these thieving agencies that supply the demand should be taken out of the equation altogether. The Global Watchdog (there should be one, the UN does not count) should storm Asia and close down all the bile farms. The tree frogs and frilly-necked lizards that are snatched from their jungles in Indonesia and shipped worldwide should be illegal to own. It should be illegal to possess an exotic pet. That includes pythons, they are high on the hit list, too.
When is man going to stop this plunder? Bears in Asia are on the vulnerable list, the poaching and unregulated hunting is taking its toll on their numbers. The numbers continue to shrink, the bears live in unbearably cruel conditions and the rhino (whose horn has NO medicinal properties, incidentally) is seriously threatened by a trade in ancient folklore. I think it is time the rest of the world realised that what an Asian person chooses to believe is of huge consequence. These people have arcane belief systems and nature is paying for their ignorance. Can someone please educate Asia? There has to be a change.
C.J. Birch
C.J. Birch 