Animals in Labs Article from All-Creatures.org

Why are bears being farmed for their bile?

From Calum Armitage, SpeciesUnite.com
August 2024

Bear bile is a digestive fluid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder, which some traditional Chinese medicine practitioners use. Around 10,000 bears, mainly sun and moon bears, exist within the bile industry across Asia.

Bear on a bile farm. Credit: Animals Asia

Industrial animal farming takes many evil forms across the globe, each with their own unique moral depravities and environmental baggage. Bile farming is one particularly grim incarnation of animal agriculture deserving of its own global protests, yet it is one that many are unaware even goes on.

Around 10,000 bears—mainly sun and moon bears, but increasingly brown bears too—exist within the bile industry across Asia. Ripped from the wild as a cub (often after watching their mother get killed trying to protect them), any bear unlucky enough to find themselves on a bile farm will experience decades of confinement in a cage so small they’re unable to stand on all fours or turn around. Most will lose teeth from gnawing desperately on the steel bars imprisoning them.

Forced starvation in order to produce more bile is commonplace, as well as painful unnecessary bile-extraction procedures with rusted equipment. Many ‘bile bears’, enduring years of endless boredom, also exhibit trauma-induced behaviors like repetitive swaying, rocking, and self-harming.

Why bear bile?

Bear bile is a digestive fluid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder, which some traditional Chinese medicine practitioners use. The bile is rich in ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA). Unlike the vast majority of traditional animal medicines that have zero proven benefit for the human body—from tiger bone to pangolin scales—UDCA is actually capable of breaking up gallstones and helping treat some forms of liver disease. Proponents of bear bile often add to this by (incorrectly) stating it can cure hangovers, change hair color, and even treat COVID-19.

Many who consume bile products view bile from wild bears as more potent, adding to severe population decline in already endangered species. Unfortunately, wild bear populations across Asia are in such sharp decline that brown bears in the U.S. have become targeted by poachers. After the kill, their gallbladders are sold and exported to other countries; a single organ can fetch the poacher somewhere in the ballpark of $1000.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE, including:

• Suffering on bear bile farms
• Do bear-free alternatives exist?

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: August 13, 2024
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