There are about 7,000 bears on bear-bile farms in
China. The captive animals are used to supply the voracious
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) market. Bear bile has been an
ingredient in TCM for thousands of years, but intensive bear farming
only came into existence in the 1980s when China's supply of wild
bears began running low. The farms, however, have created a new set
of problems.
Milking
Usually bile is extracted from the bears' gallbladders twice a
day through a surgically implanted tube. The process, called
"milking," produces from .338 to .676 oz. (10–20 ml.) of bile each
time. Milking is clearly painful for the bears, who are often seen
moaning and chewing their paws during the process.
Sometimes the farmers just push a hollow steel stick through a
bear's abdomen, and the bile runs into a basin under the cage.
Surgery to insert the tube or stick is seldom performed by
veterinarians (very few bear farms employ them). Roughly half of the
bears die from infections or other complications.
Cages
On most bear bile farms, the bears are housed in a cage that is
about 2.6 feet x 4.2 feet x 6.5 feet—so small that these 110- to
260-pound animals can barely sit up or turn around. The bars
pressing against their bodies leave scars, some as long as four
feet. Some bears have head wounds from banging them against the
bars. Many of the bears have broken and worn teeth from biting the
bars.
Cubs and Older Bears
Captive-bred cubs are taken from their mothers at three months.
(In the wild, they have been observed staying with their mothers for
up to 18 months.) Infant mortality is high. Captive mothers often
eat their young, a behavior attributed to the stress of captivity
because it seldom occurs in the wild. Some farms train cubs to
perform in circuses (riding a bicycle, boxing, or walking a
tightrope) until they are about 18 months old. Milking of the
gallbladder begins at three years.
Once they stop producing bile (between five and ten years of
age), bears are either allowed to die from starvation or illness, or
they are killed so the farm can sell their paws (one quoted price
was $250 each) and gallbladders ($150 each).
