Chinese Bear Farms

When you think of the bear, the majority of people would think of them ambling down the slopes of a hill from the woodland towards the stream, pausing at the waters edge, looking intently before swiping with a huge clawed paw and scooping dinner up out of the water.

Sadly for around 10,000 bears in China this is nothing more than a dream which is quickly fading away; these bears know nothing but a small cage. Their home is so cramped they cannot stand, they cannot even move around and their muscles begin to atrophy.

This is the sad and cruel existence of these bears all for the sake of having their bile extracted on a daily basis, through a rough cut hole into which a catheter has been crudely inserted. Some of the animals will live this existence for the rest of their lives, four years. Four years is around the average of which the bears live in these squalid and unsanitary conditions, a far cry from the average of around 25 years if he were roaming free in the wild. All for the sake of adding ingredients into a popular form of medicine, known as, Traditional Chinese medicine.

www.savethebears.co.uk has been highlighting the conditions in which these animals are kept in, along with the WSPA, the World Society for Protection of Animals and the WWF, the World Wildlife Fund.

There are many welfare issues associated with Bear farming, being captured and taken from your home environment is stressful to say the very least but when your new home is a tiny cage, you can only imagine the stress the bears go through.

The actual extraction of the bile from the bear is often carried out in unsanitary circumstances with it causing the bear a lot of pain, the pain is often prolonged due to the circumstances in which the bear is kept. It is not unusual for the bear to be seen curled up holding their stomach and shivering after this inhumane procedure, worse still the animal has to suffer the procedure day in and day out with no respite.

Fortunately many of the organisations have now recognised bear farms for what they are, nothing more than a trade industry and are now taking steps to put an end to bear farming and the suffering of the animals. You can do your bit too by supporting the WSPA and putting an end to this inhumane and cruel practice of bile extraction.