Hi, I got an EMail from a friend of mine. She asked me to pass it along, but it sounds totally bogus to me, so I thought I’d come to you to clear this up.
The EMail claimed that over 10,000(!) bears are imprisoned in coffin-sized cages, in a horitontal position, bearly (no pun intended) able to move, having to lick the bars to get liquids (?!). They are kept there, according to that EMail, for 15 years, and all this is for extracting bile from their gall bladders, for an industry that produces shampoos, aphrodisiacs and various “mircale cures”.
Now, this looks like so much bull, that I’m embarassed to send it here… But just it case there’s any truth to it - what’s the straight dope on imprisoned bears in China?
Yes, it does occur and it’s called “bear farming”. Bile related medicinal products and bile made shampoos, lotions and other products are a big seller in China and those who farm the bears say that they are helping preserve the wild species. The ecologists say that’s a lie and that the bears are coming from out in the wild to begin with, so it’s doing nothing except making using bear bile more profitable for the farmers at the expense of the bears. I have to side with the ecologists on this one. While in a sense it’s not worse than our meat production industry, the bears are an endangered species and the products can’t be legally exported due to international law (though many probably are to other parts of Asia).
Oh, for the record: don’t take my saying that the email is true as an endorsement to start sending it hither and yon. Spam is spam and unless you’re sending it to people who have the desire or ability to do something about this (which is about impossible given that it’s an internal Chinese issue and I doubt China really cares what 50,000 computer users care about their bear farming practices) it’s still about as polite to send to someone as a letter from Bill Gates offering everyone $1000.
Yes it is quite true, although it principally occurs in the Autonomous District of Yanbien in China, an area of mainly ethnic Koreans. They actually tried exporting the goods to the US in the mid-90’s, leading up to a series of arrests, seizures and trials in Los Angeles, so it’s not exclusively an internal problem. The traffic is both ways, thaat’s to say the Asiatic bear is preferred and gets smuggled in to the US, although No.American bears are also poached and exported East.
Without explicating at length, Chinese pharmacopeia has quite a few substitutes for the stuff; whereas use of bear bile in Korea is more of a “tonic”, used in greater quantities, and also has not a little “cachet”. Sorta the difference between a Peruvian farmer chewing coca leaves and some Hollywood mogul snorting up powder.
In 1996, a big public outreach program went out with the participation of the US, Chinese, Japanese governments - but the Korean gov’t declined.