"Bile Bear" Dies on Hunger Strike.

[FYI. For Your Interest.]

An Un-bear-able trade - Free Malaysia Today

January 17, 2012

Bear farming is rife in Asia with Malaysia as one of its prime product producers and consumers.

/span>http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/2012/01/17/an-un-bear-able-trade/b...>

Louis Ng is no stranger to close encounters with animals in distress. But nothing
quite prepared him for the emotional exchange with an adult bear outside a
bear farm in Laos.

A film-maker had stumbled upon the farm and contacted Ng, the co-founder
and executive director of Animal Concerns Research and Education Society
(ACRES) in Singapore.

When he visited the farm in November 2009, the sight that greeted him was
that of a female bear lying motionless in a cage.

The owner explained that she was refusing food and starving herself to
death so he had left her outside to meet her inevitable end. Ng crouched
near but a safe distance from the cage and watched her.

After a few minutes the bear, who was on her 10th day of hunger strike
pushed a limp paw through the cage bars and weakly flexed her claws in Ng’s
direction. He realised with a start that she was reaching for his hand. And
so he gave it to her.

[Carolyn Bailey]

I find it very difficult to believe this bear was on a hunger strike. I think it is more likely that she was in such excrutiating pain, she was simply unable to eat, or function any longer. 

Bears who are used for their bile are often kept in very small cages, unable to stand or turn around, for the 10-12 years of their lives, having a tube inserted into their abdomen, from which their bile is extracted twice a day. The tube may be left in their abdomen permanently. The bile may drip back into their abdomen, causing further excruciating pain, the insertion of the tube and it's permanency may (and almost always does) cause unbearable pain and infection. Moon bears commonly chew on their own paws and moan in pain as the bile is being extracted, and even when not. 

The active ingredient in bear bile, ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), is more abundant in bears than in any other animal. However, Chinese medical practitioners stress that all bear bile products can be easily replaced by herbal or synthetic alternatives, which are cheaper, more readily available and just as effective.

Bear bile is used mostly for cure or prevention of diseases of the liver and eyes. But, because there is such an over-saturation of bear bile on the market these days, it is also being used in products such as shampoo, wine and even marketted as a product to improve love making. 

This is one of the most horrific uses of other animals I have ever seen, and I think that too few people are aware of it's existence, or how prevalent this practice is in some countries. 

 

[Kerry Baker]

I can believe that this bear chose to end her life.  This situation of the bile bears is an horrendous practice that WSPA and HSI and other animal welfare organisations are rightfully trying to end.  Animals are more like us than we care to admit, because to do so would be to acknowledge their suffering is made that much greater by the awareness of what lies in wait for them.   Tragic indeed.

[Louise, London]

This is just such indescribably disgusting behavior!  How can they?! 

Thanks for bringing this up Roger, and thankyou Kerry for highlighting the organisations who are working to change it.  We can only support change if we know what is happening, no matter how awful it is to hear about it. 

 

[Kerry Baker]

See the following websites;

http://www.wlpa.org/bear_bile_farming.htm

http://endbearbilefarming.blogspot.com/

http://www.wspa-international.org/wspaswork/bears/bearfarming/nonee...

http://www.ebm-first.com/traditional-chinese-medicine-tcm/chinese-b...

http://www.animalsasia.org/

Being in Australia I donate monthly to both WSPA and HSI to got towards these issues.  Money is good as it is often used to help people who are engaged in this and other dreadful activities to start up new sources of business that don't involve cruelty to animals.

Cheers

Kerry

Louise, London said:

This is just such indescribably disgusting behavior!  How can they?! 

Thanks for bringing this up Roger, and thankyou Kerry for highlighting the organisations who are working to change it.  We can only support change if we know what is happening, no matter how awful it is to hear about it. 

 

[Kerry Baker]

In another thread which I don't wish to resurrect as it did become quite angry, there was a suggestion that animals should be genetically manipulated to stop them being carnivores, and failing that to impose contraception on species to make them die out.  The suggestion was that the killing is extreme cruelty.  The people who posted however were not prepared to treat humans the same way and suggested that the difference is in the higher cognition of humans than of other species, something which personally I don't agree with.

It would be interesting to know if there has been any evidence of animals in the wild committing suicide as a result of cruelty from other animal species, or their own for that matter.