Unbearable Behavior

by Adam Roberts

                 Indefatigable animal advocates working to improve the condition of non-human animals and end animal exploitation  often focus on a single abuse affecting many species.  Some concentrate on freeing dogs, cats, rats, mice, birds and primates  from laboratories; others on ending cruel factory farming practices adversely affecting cows, pigs, chickens and other  “agricultural” animals; still others on changing attitudes toward trophy hunting whether it’s threatened species outside the  United States such as African elephants, or more widespread populations of deer, literally, right in our own backyards.  In many  instances, however, one type of animal is exposed to numerous forms of abuse; exploring that cruelty crossover is a worthwhile endeavor.  If one cares about animals mistreated in biomedical research, one should also be concerned with the predicament of  endangered wildlife, and vice versa.  The plight of the world’s remaining eight bear species provides a perfect example of oppression begetting oppression in many insidious forms.

All bears (American black bear, Brown bear, Polar bear, Giant panda, Sloth bear, Sun bear, Asiatic black bear, and Spectacled bear) are subjected to inhumane treatment across all parts of their global range.  Some, such as the sun bears of southeastern Asia, are poached for food and fur and captured for the pet trade.  Others are used in zoos and circuses and cruel entertainment.  For instance, in Pakistan, brown bears are not only hunted for sport and crop protection, but are still captured by gypsies to be trained for public fighting.  Aleem Ahmed Khan of the Ornithological Society of Pakistan describes the public “fight” between the bear and one to three dogs:

The bear is tethered by a five-meter long rope in the center of a large open space, around which the spectators (mostly rural dwellers) get seated.  The sharp teeth and claws of the bears are also removed when they are captured as cubs.  The fight continues for a fixed period of three minutes.  If within these three minutes the dogs can get hold of the bear’s snout and bring the bear to the ground on its back, the dogs win.  If the bear is not flat on its back in three minutes, it is declared the winner.  The owner of the bear and dog can retrieve his animal before three minutes, in which case he loses the wrestling match.  In one day, a bear may fight three times but it must rest for at least three minutes before each fight.

In neighboring India, bears are captured as cubs and raised to dance for tourists.  The World Society for the Protection for Animals is at the forefront of the campaign to end these savage animal acts.  WSPA investigators describe how the bears’ teeth are removed before the age of one year and the cubs’ muzzles are pierced and a rope inserted through the hole to ensure sufficient control.  The bear is “held down without anaesthetic while a crude iron needle is heated in a coal fire and plunged in with a group of men holding the squealing cub tight.” 

                 Not all bears removed from the wild are used for barbarous entertainment.   Some are used in medical experiments.  One significant use of (American black) bears as a testing model is in osteoporosis research.  It has long been thought that studying the metabolic rate of black bears during hibernation might answer the question of how to prevent bone loss in aging or otherwise dormant animals, notably humans.  Bears apparently have a unique capacity to maintain bone mass throughout these prolonged periods of inactivity. 

                 In one 1988 study reported in Acta Physiologica Scandinavica, researchers captured three adult Canadian black bears (which were deemed “nuisance” animals) and transported them by rail from Manitoba to Churchill.  There they were kept in an “experimental” steel, insulated den for as long as 128 days to study their weight loss.  The authors concluded that “Further study is required to determine the precise relationship between metabolism and weight for dormant black bears.”  Another study in Illinois on four bears was undertaken in 1991.  The report in Biochemical Physiology  notes that the study’s three male bears all lost between a fifth and a quarter of their body weight during denning, but by spring testing “they had regained the majority of this lost mass.”  Here, too, the authors indicate that further work needs to be undertaken. 

                These experiments involve relatively small numbers of animals in relatively benign circumstances compared to the practice of bear bile “farming” in countries such as China, South Korea and Taiwan.  Asiatic black bears are forced into cramped cages to spend their shortened lives having their bile extracted for use in traditional Asian medicine.  The Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) in Hong Kong notes that South Korea has banned bear farming, but still has 1,300 bears in 108 farms across the country.  According to Zhiyong Fan of the Chinese Ministry of Forestry, bear farming began in China in 1984; by 1986 there were 7,642 bears in 481 farms. 

                Bears kept in these “farms” are restrained in enclosures usually so small the animal cannot turn around.  This close confinement prevents dislodging of the steel catheters which are surgically implanted into the bears’ gallbladder and used as “taps” to extract the bears’ bile.  Jill Robinson of AAF, the world’s leading campaigner to save bears from these horrible bile extraction facilities, explains that the exit holes from these insertions may become inflamed, infected and bloody, and that some of the bears “had been fitted with metal vests to stop them from pulling the catheters out when the pain became too much to tolerate.” 

                In Tibetan medicine, described in T. J. Tsarong’s Handbook of Traditional Tibetan Drugs, bear bile is one ingredient in a mixture called “BRAG-KHUNG RIL-BU” which, when drunk with hot water, is used to treat “pain in stomach from inflammation and passing of blood in stool.”  Another remedy containing bear viscera is “MIG-sMAN sKYER-KHEN” which is distilled in water for eye drops and prescribed for “itching and reddishness of the eyes from inflammation, pain in the eye or watery eyes.”  These are but two examples of myriad applications of bear parts in Asian medicines.  There is also increasing evidence that bear bile is being used in luxury cosmetic items such as shampoos and hemorrhoid creams.

                The active ingredient in bear bile is Ursodeoxycholic Acid (UDCA) which is a bile acid found in small quantities in normal human bile but in larger quantities in certain species of bears.  The Earth Care Society (Hong Kong) and the Association of Chinese Medicine and Philosophy recognize over 50 herbal alternatives to bear bile, proving that traditional medicine can be practiced without harming animals.

                But  the demand for bear gallbladders and bile in traditional Asian medicines prescribed throughout Asia and Asian communities worldwide is enormous and the price that may be paid for such bear parts and fluids is in some cases, ounce for ounce, more than gold or heroin.  This leads to commerce not only in gallbladders and bile from caged Asiatic black bears, but to illegal hunting of wild bears across the globe.

                This is especially problematic since, as a result of the drastic decline of bears on the Asian continent, poachers and smugglers are now increasingly targeting the North American bear population to supply the international demand for bear parts.  Bears are killed in the wild, their gallbladders and paws removed (the paws are eaten in high-priced soups), and their carcasses left to rot.  In the past few years alone, cases involving bear poaching and gallbladder sales have spread across the United States including Oregon, Washington, California, Utah, Idaho, Minnesota, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  The enormous potential profit from trade of bear gallbladders and bile promotes poaching and illegal commercialization of bear parts.

                Clearly, bears are subjected to a systematic pattern of universal exploitation: as a source of food and fur, in medical research and medicinal remedies, and as a target for legal “sport” hunters and unscrupulous poachers.  Unfortunately, in terms of comprehensive animal abuse, bears represent one example, not a mere exception.  Perhaps the recognition that our interest in protecting animals must include all forms of cruelty will be an important step toward success.  Aldo Leopold was right on when he wrote in A Sand County Almanac, that “The rich diversity of the world’s cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.”  And conversely, as humans continue creatively destroying both wild lands and animals, we run the risk of simultaneously eviscerating our own civilization.