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about Asia Buzz
Culture on Demand: Embarrassing Secrets
Asia and Russia's tasteless trade in bear products
By STAN STALNAKER
August
11, 2000
Web posted at 10:00 p.m. Hong Kong time, 10:00 a.m. EDT
It's nice to be in the news and a topic of conversation, but one of Asia's embarrassing little secrets is making the rounds on the Internet, and it's something everyone should be ashamed of.
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INTERACTIVE |
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The bear trade has become a hot button issue for countries like China, where undercover reporters, activists and regulators are bringing back pictures and stories from bear farms that would turn most people's stomachs. Bear bile is prized in traditional Chinese medicine for a number of qualities ranging from cancer and cirrhosis cures to aphrodisiacs, but its trade and production is jeopardizing Asia's, Russia's and North America's bear populations.
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ASIAWEEK |
Intelligence
The story behind today's news from the editors of Asiaweek
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Activism concerning the legal and illegal bear trade (especially the bile from bear gall bladders) is heating up, with online petitions and boycotts in circulation worldwide. Saving the bears seems to be this week's 'new cause', and for good reason - they are fast disappearing from the wild, and the ones in captivity, especially within China, are subjected to shocking cruelty.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is a United Nations treaty that comes closest to regulating the bear trade. As the premier international vehicle for regulating international trade in wild plants and animals, they try to monitor bear farms within China, Korea, and Japan that produce medicinal products from bear bile. It is estimated that in China alone, 20,000 to 60,000 Asiatic black bears, brown bears and sun bears are currently in captivity, though the numbers are thought to be unreliable due to illegal operations and growing imports from Burma and the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka.
Since the fall of communism and resulting lack of regulation and enforcement in Russia, CITES and other researchers have reported a decimation of the wild bear populations on the Kamchatka peninsula, once a bear haven with robust populations. Wild bears have been poached and sometimes left with only their gall bladders missing -- with bile that sells for anywhere between $10-75 dollars a gram depending on the quality and the market its being sold in.
The trade is also serious in Alaska and Canada, where local bear populations are being harvested for paws, meat, and bile for shipment to Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The practice is illegal.
In the greater China area, somewhat dated evidence and reports from researchers showed that Macau's traditional medicine shops offered a number of bear bile related products. China and Hong Kong enforce stricter laws, perhaps making Macau a soft spot for the trade.
CITES and the World Wildlife Fund have reported that the steady demand for bear bile and products is keeping the business going. China, under fire for allowing the practice of extraction of bile at the bear farms to continue, is said to be considering totally banning the trade, but activists maintain it can't happen soon enough. Captured or bred bears are kept in metal cages scarcely larger than their bodies for periods up to fifteen years. The bile is sometimes harvested through open sores with metal rods or syringes inserted into the bear's bladder for fluid extraction, sometimes with no anesthetic. In some cases, bears kept in 4x5 pits have exhibited dementia -- like you wouldn't?
Asia has a responsibility to face up to maltreatment of animals in its own back yard. It has a responsibility to stop consuming products that cause unreasonable pain to living subjects, especially when synthetic substitutes are available. And we all have a responsibility to let China know that people want the practice stopped.
If a friend sends you the currently circulating petition on the net, consider signing and forwarding it -- for the bears.
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