Bear Bile Promoted As Coronavirus Treatment In China
Over 20,000 bears are kept in cages on farms to produce the cruel bile.
Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media
Wildlife campaigners are worried and concerned as China’s National Health Commission (CNHC) has recommended a coronavirus treatment that contains bear bile powder.
The practice of bear bile extraction is controversial because of the “severe suffering” that it causes to the bears. Typically, bears are kept in small cages on bile farms, where they are forced to regularly have their bile - found in the gallbladder - extracted.
“Bear's bile is extracted using various invasive techniques, all of which cause severe suffering, pain and infection,” says Animals Asia, a charity which has been campaigning for the closure of bear bile farms for over 20 years.
The group points out some of the shocking conditions that these bears face, explaining that most farmed bears are kept permanently in cages, sometimes so small that they are unable to turn around or stand on all fours. Some bears are caged as cubs and never released, with many kept caged for up to 30 years.
With the CNHC now recommending ‘Tan Re Qing’, an injection that contains bear bile powder, to treat COVID-19 cases, campaigners are concerned that the demand for bear bile will increase and cause even more bears to suffer.
There is also growing concern from experts who point out the danger that wildlife farms, such as those used to extract bear bile, pose to human health.
“Whether [wildlife is] being consumed as meat or as medicine, the risks are still there in how the animals are being slaughtered, gathered and stored, processed, consumed,” Aron White, wildlife campaigner for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) told National Geographic.
Up until this recent recommendation, there has been promising developments to counter the trade: groups like Animals Asia have rescued nearly 700 bears from the bile farm industry, and countries including Vietnam are implementing legislation to help decrease the demand for bear bile.
Campaigners must now hope that the CNHC’s recommendation of bear bile powder encourages people to buy some of the many inexpensive and effective herbal and synthetic alternatives to bear bile instead.
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