Faced with resistance from animal activists and the general public, a Chinese pharmaceutical company about to issue an IPO to raise funds for expansion allowed more than 100 reporters to visit a farm where it breeds bears for their bile. You got it right - their bile. Seems for nearly 3,000 years, bear bile has been used as an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) to cure eye and liver ailments which some TCM experts claim is of "irreplaceable" medical value.
At the bear farm of Guizhentang Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, based in the eastern province of Fujian, a Xinhua reporter saw about 60 bears roaming outdoors. A farm worker said more than 600 bears were kept in the farm, with some in the open and others in concrete bungalows covered with wire netting.
The reporter was also allowed to witness the bile extraction process. A bear was placed in a small cage about the size of the bear and then a practitioner disinfected the permanent shunt in the bear's abdomen. He then inserted an 8-centimeter-long fine tube into the shunt and extracted about 100 milliliters of bile. Finally, he removed the tube and disinfected the shunt again. The whole process lasted about 30 seconds, during which the bear was consuming liquid food and remained quiet. The reporter noticed that there were more than 100 cages used to conduct this procedure.
Far be it from me to question the value of TCM, in fact its popularity is growing in the western world an an alternate medicine but somehow farming bears for this purpose sounds barbaric - The Animal Free Asia Foundation (to be fair they do have their own agenda) has stated of 165 bears they examined 36 had gallstones as large as 7 cm. I don't think you want to try and understand how painful that might be! Of those 165 bears, 99% had cholecystitis and 66% had gallbladder polyps. Not a pretty picture.
It looks as though the IPO will be approved and the company will expand their operations so just remember this post the next time you take a hit of some TCM - it just might contain some bear bile.
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