We are NOT the official Animals Asia but we are the official Lancashire branch in the UK to help this charity, please click the banner below to visit the Animals Asia official site to see all the fantastic work they are doing. Bear bile is a prized ingredient of Traditional Medicine with a 3,000-year history of usage. The bile liquid within bear gall bladders is classed as a "bitter, cold" medicine with the function of expelling heat in the body. It is used to treat heat-related illnesses such as high temperatures, liver complaints and sore eyes. Bear bile medicines are used in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and countries across the world with significant Asian populations. The active ingredient in bear bile, ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), is more abundant in bears than in any other animal. However, Chinese medical practitioners stress that all bear bile products can be easily replaced by herbal or synthetic alternatives, which are cheaper, more readily available and just as effective. The main products of bear farms are dry bile powder and some Chinese patent medicines. Bear bile is used mainly as a secondary element with limited composition. The use of bear bile can be divided into two categories; bear bile as medicine, (both treatment and preventative,) and bear bile as tonics and food. China's state pharmacopoeia asserts that its actions include * removing heat from the liver * relieving convulsions and spasms * improving acuity of vision * clearing away heat and toxic materials There are 28 kinds of patent medicine containing bear bile, which are divided as follows: * 15 used in ophthalmology * 8 in external surgery * 4 in internal medicine (vascular and gastric illnesses) * 1 in cancer treatment. Production The output of dry bile powder from each individual bear is approximately 2 kg per year on average. Before bear farms began to produce bile in large quantities the domestic demand was only 500 kilos annually. Today this has risen dramatically to 4000 kilos and the annual output of dry bile powder from 1994-1998 was approximately 7 tonnes - nearly twice the demand. Tragically, because the market has been saturated with bear bile, many farmers have now turned to producing non-essential products, such as throat lozenges, shampoo, wine and tea, in order to utilise the surplus. These products have no known health benefit, but allow the farmer to continue making a profit by exploiting the symbol of a majestic species and the trusting minds of naive consumers. Price The retail price of farmed bear bile in China varies from province to province. Research in August 2007 by Animals Asia investigators in Sichuan Province revealed that the wholesale price of bear bile powder was US$410 per kg. A whole gall bladder in South Korea sells for about US$10,000, whilst in Japan the average price for a wild bear gall bladder is US$33 per gram. ************************************************************ Science supports alternatives to bear bile Wednesday, January 7, 2009, 08:13 AM So many positive developments just now in relation to dogs, cats and bears, that it's hard to know where to start. Just before we intercepted the truck full of caged dogs rescued from being delivered to the live animal markets on New Year's Eve, I was going to write about developments in research on the alternatives to bear bile. Our good friend and benefactor Mr Frank Pong – who so generously gave us the financial confidence in July 2000 to start the China Bear Rescue – has once again shown how committed he is to helping end bear farming. In early 2008, Frank generously gave a grant under his Pong Ding Yuen Endowment Fund for Education and Research in Chinese-Western Medicine. This grant allowed Assistant Professor Feng Yibin and his colleagues at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Chinese Medicine to research the effectiveness of various Chinese herbal alternatives for ailments commonly treated using bear bile products. The grant was matched by the Hong Kong Government and will allow the studies to continue for the next four years. Excitingly, on the 13th of December, we were invited to the 5th Pong Ding Yeun International Traditional Chinese Medicine Symposium at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Chinese Medicine, where Professor Feng (at left with Frank and me) presented the initial results of his research. It was an unforgettable presentation, as we heard Professor Feng comparing research into the effectiveness of herbs compared with bear bile and showing the herb “coptis” to be far more effective than bear bile at killing cancer cell lines. There is much more research to be done, but these initial results are extremely positive for our work and of course for those poor bears clearly suffering so unnecessarily on the farms. Following the presentation, we were invited by the university to hold a press conference which virtually all of Hong Kong's major print media attended as Professor Feng, Frank and I spoke about bear farming abuse and the research results in more depth. We are incredibly grateful to Frank and his family who have been supporting this work now for nearly nine years. ************************************************************ **US doctors speak out ** Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 01:07 PM In December 2007, full-page reports appeared over three days in Hong Kong's Chinese-language Wen Wei Po newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Government in Hong Kong. The reporter undertook a four-month undercover investigation with the help of Animals Asia, and wrote a series of features that exposed the true horrors of bear farming today. The articles were picked up by supporters all over the world, including by Eric H Busch MD, a member of the department of Anesthesiology at Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, Louisiana, US and an expert in pain management. This was his letter to Wen Wei Po: Mr Zhang Guo Liang President Wen Wei Po Dear Mr. Zhang, I represent a group of concerned doctors here in the United States. We have read your recent articles on the bear bile industry. We have been aware of bear farming for many years and are, like many individuals, distressed by the suffering of these animals. As interested physicians, we would like to express our viewpoint on several issues. Perhaps this will be helpful to those who find the relationship of bear bile to pharmaceuticals confusing. By way of background, bile is a liquid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. This mixture of acids, cholesterol, water, and electrolytes aids in the digestion of food. The bile of all mammals contains a chemical called ursodeoxycholic acid or UDCA. UDCA is chemically very different from the other bile acids, which may account for its healing properties, and it has been recognized for at least forty years to be the therapeutic element of bear bile. For reasons we don’t fully understand, bears have more UDCA in their bile than other animals, which may explain the historical basis for bear bile use in traditional Chinese medicine. We have never seen any evidence that there are any other therapeutic constituents of bear bile. This may be due to the corrosive nature of bile, which destroys most other substances including proteins and amino acids. The effects of pharmaceutical UDCA on human systems have been studied extensively, resulting in the use of this drug worldwide for a number of specific diseases. These include primary biliary cirrhosis, sclerosing cholangitis, and gallstone disease. The potential application of UDCA in humans does not end there. Active research in the treatment of neurological disease, eye disease, and heart attack is promising. This UDCA, a medication taken by millions of patients, is not taken from bears. It is produced by pharmaceutical companies from bile collected in slaughterhouses. The end result is a pharmaceutical product which is of known potency and purity, widely available under various trade names. It is our view that this medication has made the use of bear bile unnecessary. That being said, we suppose that if individuals wish to consume bile for indications that do not require the therapeutic properties of UDCA, bile of many types is readily available. We find a number of flaws with bear farm products when they are considered as medicines. Farmed bears have a high rate of liver cancers, which are probably the result of chronic infection and inflammation of the gall bladder and liver. This, coupled with the collection techniques, results in bile that contains pus (white blood cells), debris, skin cells, and other impurities. We wonder if some of these elements are present in the compounds ingested by patients. In addition, it is difficult to know how much active drug is present in each sample. After all, each bear produces different amounts of UDCA at different times. We want to stress that we do not intend to criticize traditional Chinese medicine for its use of bear bile. Bear bile was once a necessary part of their methods and we, along with millions of patients worldwide, are grateful for the discovery of UDCA by traditional Chinese medicine. That being said, change and evolution are a part of all progress, and while Western medicine has learned and benefited from traditional medicine, traditional medicine can do the same by making bear bile a part of its past. Knowledge is power. UDCA is an important pharmaceutical which has the potential to improve human health. We hope that the governments of China and other Asian countries that now sanction bear farming will recognize this logic and act in the best interest of patients requiring UDCA and the bears that are part of this industry. By eliminating bear bile and publicly supporting the use of these widely available, clinically proven pharmaceuticals, these countries can actually enhance the health of those who need the benefits of UDCA while putting an end to bear farming. Finally, there will be those who will dispute what we have said. They will refer to special elements of bile that cannot be reproduced in any pharmaceutical. With that in mind, we wonder how the confinement, pain, debilitation, and untimely death of the farm bear affect the healing properties that are attributed to its bile. The chi in a bear subjected to these conditions must be weak indeed. The best health care involves the mixture of compassion, knowledge, skill, and those intangible elements that cannot be explained. We respectfully suggest that the use of bear bile is not only unnecessary, but also inconsistent with these ideals. We are hopeful that those who are receptive to change will find the facts and ideas presented herein helpful, and that our thoughts can spark a new debate on these important issues. Respectfully, Eric H. Busch M.D. New Orleans, Louisiana January 23, 2008 www.bearbilefacts.org www.animalsasia.org