SAVING BEARS IN CHINA

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Dear Ms Robinson,

The attached article on your work has been published in Sun

Sentinel Of South Florida. It is always a pleasure to receive your news updates.

Trust you are well and all the best in your work.

Best wishes and kind regards,

 

Yours sincerely,

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cbears17sep17,0,7879610.\

story?page=2 & coll=sfla-home-headlines

Saving bears in China

 

 

Animals that were `milked' of their bile for Chinese medicine are now being

rescued.

 

By David Fleshler

Staff Writer

Posted September 17 2005

 

 

CHENGDU, CHINA

The aging black bear climbed off her bunk and lumbered over to Jill Robinson, an

activist who has dedicated herself to saving the bears of China.

 

" Hello, Franzi, " Robinson cooed in a soft British accent, as the bear nibbled

cranberries from her hand. " What a good girl you are. "

 

Franzi's pleasant routine of cranberries, caresses and outdoor ramblings

follows a life of suffering on a farm that produces ingredients for traditional

Chinese medicine. Held for 25 years in a cage that kept her virtually immobile,

Franzi lived with a painful hole drilled and redrilled into her abdomen so her

gallbladder could be drained of bile.

 

An ancient Chinese remedy for rashes, fevers and other health problems, bear

bile appears on the shelves of medicine shops throughout East Asia, as well as

in Asian communities overseas. To produce the bile, thousands of Asiatic black

bears are caged on farms in China, Vietnam, Burma and North and South Korea,

according to Animals Asia, the World Society for the Protection of Animals and

other animal-welfare groups.

 

Many bears have catheters permanently implanted in their abdomens. Some are

trussed in metal corsets to prevent them from removing the painful needle.

 

Horrified upon visiting a Chinese bile farm in 1993, Robinson founded Animals

Asia (www.animalsasia.org), which is rescuing bears and pressuring the

government to shut down the farms by the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The group

operates a sanctuary on the outskirts of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province,

which provides a home for more than 150 bears purchased from bile farms.

 

Through skillful negotiations, Robinson developed a working relationship with

Chinese officials. They set up programs to develop synthetic substitutes for

bear bile. And in 2000, in an agreement greeted with cheers among animal-welfare

activists, the government signed an agreement with Animals Asia to buy 500 bears

-- including Franzi -- from bile farms in Sichuan province and send them to the

sanctuary.

 

Since then, as farm after farm has been shut down, trucks deliver the caged

survivors to Animals Asia's compound of forest, meadows, cages and veterinary

offices.

 

Many bears arrive groaning, usually a sign that the continual draining of bile

has led to peritonitis or liver cancer. The sickest are rushed into surgery,

where veterinarians remove gallstones the size of fists and hernias the size of

watermelons. If they discover cancer or peritonitis, there's usually little to

do but euthanize the bears.

 

The rest go into recovery cages, roomy enclosures that allow them to stretch

their legs for the first time in years. Workers give them treats -- bananas,

apples, pears, medicated strawberry shakes -- for many, the first kindness they

ever encounter.

 

" We give them as much water as we can, " said Gail Cochrane, veterinary director

of the sanctuary. " They don't get water on the farms. When they're cleaning,

they just hose them down. I've been to bear farms. They're frantically lapping

the water and licking any water they can get off their front legs and feet. "

 

After the bears have spent a month or so recovering, Cochrane and her team

remove their traumatized gallbladders. They treat them for arthritis and make

them as pain-free as possible.

 

" The majority of them come around really, really well, " Cochrane said. " They run

around. They romp and play with each other. They climb trees. The reason we know

they're happy is they develop normal bear behavior. They get to forage for food

in a big enclosure. They get to find wild plants to eat. They find small

animals, small birds, rodents, frogs, insects. "

 

A special section of the sanctuary houses disabled refugees from the bile farms,

usually missing one or more limbs from leg-hold traps. Annie, missing her left

front leg, wades in a shallow pool under the cooling water of a fountain.

 

Katja, also missing a leg, gnaws on the branch of a bamboo tree. Every day, as

soon as her cage door opens, she rushes out in search of the dried fruit that

had been hidden for the bears to find.

 

" She likes sweet things, " said Robinson, watching the bears amble contentedly

among the trees. " Dried fruit, chocolate spread, honey, ice pops. She's obsessed

with sweetness. "

 

Until recent times, Chinese medicine shops obtained bile from bears killed in

the wild. But in the late 1970s, North Korea developed the technique of keeping

bears alive in cages and milking them daily for this " liquid gold, " according to

Peter Li, a Chinese-born assistant professor of political science at the

University of Houston, who has studied the bile trade.

 

The practice spread to China, where the ruling Communist Party considered

concern for animal welfare to be a " decadent Western bourgeois idea, " Li said.

After initially defending the farms as a way to protect wild bears, the

government imposed restrictions on the farms in 1996, outlawing the use of

permanently implanted catheters and requiring bears to be given time outside

their cages.

 

But Li and other activists say these restrictions are widely ignored. Animals

Asia's staff this year found bears with implanted catheters made of clear

plastic, so they would be invisible to inspectors. On a recent visit to a huge

bear farm considered a model, Li said he saw bears confined in small individual

cages and was told they were never let out.

 

" Bear farming is intrinsically cruel, " Li said. " There is no way you can improve

it. "

A spokesman for the Forestry Administration, which regulates bile farms, asked

that questions from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel be faxed to its headquarters

in Beijing. After questions were translated into Mandarin and faxed, the

Forestry Administration did not respond.

 

Chen Runsheng, secretary general of the government-sponsored China Wildlife

Conservation Association, said the government is serious about improving

conditions on the bile farms but can't simply shut them all down.

 

" The government has done everything they can to restrict or shut down the farms

that are not following the regulations, " he said. " To shut bear bile farms is

not easy, unless it's really, really bad. If a farm has a certain size, it has

an impact on the local economy. You can't just shut it down. Better to improve

it than shut it down. "

 

The number of bears on bile farms is unclear. According to Animals Asia's

estimates, there are about 7,000 in China, more than 2,000 in Vietnam, 1,100 in

South Korea and unknown numbers in North Korea and Burma. Chen Runsheng, head of

the official wildlife group, said it was impossible to know the number of bears

on Chinese farms.

 

Vietnam announced in March that it would phase out bear farming over the next

few years. In an agreement with the World Society for the Protection of Animals,

based in London, Vietnam said it would allow farmers to stay in business until

their current bears die, but not to acquire any additional bears. Animal-welfare

groups say they plan to watch carefully to make sure the government follows

through and that illegal farms don't continue to operate.

 

Known in the West primarily for acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine

remains vigorous in China, Japan, Vietnam and other East Asian countries. In the

United States, Chinese remedies, including bear bile, are being taken seriously.

 

Produced in the liver and stored in the gallbladder, bile helps digest fats.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota say the bear bile molecule,

tauroursodeoxycholic acid, can reduce brain damage in stroke-impaired rats by

more than 50 percent. They say it may also be useful in treating hepatitis C,

Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and spinal cord injuries.

 

Despite the promotion of herbal substitutes, bear bile remains in demand. An

investigation by the World Society for the Protection of Animals, a London-based

group, found bear bile products were widely available in Chinese communities in

the United States and Canada.

 

The organization was able to find bear bile products such as Jin Tian Tai Bear

Gall Powder, Musk Xiong Dan Haemorrhoid Pills and Xion Dan Feng at shops in

Chicago, New York, Washington and San Francisco and Toronto. The sale of bear

products is illegal in most states.

 

Web sites of several U.S. companies, including Asiachi.com and Wing Lam

Enterprises, offer Hsiung Tan Tieh Ta Wan, a product identified by the World

Society for the Protection of Animals as containing bear bile. In Mandarin, the

words " hsiung tan " mean, among other things, bear gallbladder or bear bile.

 

Under California law, it is a felony to sell bear bile, gallbladders or any

other bear parts, said Lorna Bernard, spokeswoman for the California Department

of Fish and Game.

 

Terri Darrell, a manager for Wing Lam enterprises, which sells martial arts

supplies, said the company gets orders " once in a while " for Hsiung Tan Tieh Ta

Wan. Asked whether she was aware it was illegal to sell bear bile products in

California, she said, " I have no idea, " and referred questions to the company's

owner, Sifu Kwong Wing Lam. He could not be reached for comment, despite

messages left on his voice mail.

 

An employee of Asiachi.com referred questions to the owner, Keng Ong, who could

not be reached, despite phone calls and e-mails.

 

Other Chinese medicine companies, aware of the product's controversial

background, no longer carry it.

 

The web site of Oriental Ginseng & Gifts, of St. Louis, offers Xiong Dan Die Da

Wan, another product identified as containing bear bile. Sale of products

containing bear parts is legal in Missouri, as long as the product was taken

legally in another state or country, said Larry Yamnitz, protection field chief

in the Missouri Department of Conservation.

 

But Shuhan Lin, owner of Oriental Ginseng & Gifts, said he doesn't sell it

anymore.

 

" We think the bear is a protected animal, " he said. " So we don't import it from

China. I can get it for you if you need it, but we prefer for our customers to

find some substitutes. "

 

David Fleshler can be reached at dfleshler or 954-356-4535.