Don’t Buy It!!
Imagine being taken away from your mother when you’re a few months old… having an iron corset strapped around your stomach… being placed in a cage where, as your body grows, the metal bars start pressing hard against your body…
Twice a day someone comes, sticks a 4 inch needle into your stomach and drains out fluid. The pain is so intense that you gnaw on your hands, writhing in pain… clutching your stomach. No one explains anything, no one cares… and EVERYDAY FOR THE NEXT 25 YEARS – that is all you know.
Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it? Or one of those freak horror movies that make you squirm and shut your eyes tightly.
This really does happen in today’s world.
The sun bears or honey bears are subject to these tortures for their bile. Bear bile is still used in Chinese medicines that claim to cure mainly eye and liver ailments. Many people claim that the bear’s bile can cure all types of diseases from a small cut to digestive problems to even cancer. It is the active constituent found in bear bile, UrsoDeoxyCholic Acid (UDCA), that these arguments are based on.
I am no scientist, and these arguments might be true – but there are many alternatives. The first synthesized UDCA was made in 1954 in Japan.
UDCA is available in many pharmaceutical brand names including Actigall and Urso (US); Destolit, Urdox, Ursofalk, and Ursogal (UK); Ursotan (South Africa).
Likewise, there are also about 54 herbal alternatives including rhubarb and dandelion!
So why is there a necessity for such cruel treatment?? There are cheaper, more sanitary and healthier alternatives.
News released 3 days ago reported how a company in China, Guizhentang Pharmaceuticals Company, was applying to make their initial public offering (IPO). This is where the public will be able to buy stocks/shares in a company, providing them capital to expand. That is exactly what Guizhentang Pharmaceuticals Company plans are… to expand.
There are currently 400 bears in their bear farm, and they plan on increasing the number to 1200! Guizhentang Pharmaceuticals Company currently have the biggest bear farm in China. And after a few years, when these bears’ bodies stop producing bile, they will be killed for every part of their body imaginable: meat, fur, paws and their actual gall bladder. Bear paws will be on restaurants’ list of delicacies, selling at up to USD250!
In 2000, CNN estimated that there were more than 7,000 bears being kept on 200 farms in China. That is a lot of lives being kept in confined cages.
There are many active groups out there who have people devoting their lives to save these sun bears, including Animals Asia and Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Center. If you have the money, donate, if you have the time, volunteer. If we sit around feeling sorry for these bears but do nothing to help, not making the effort to try, it will not make a difference in the world.
Do take a look at the photos below… these bears don’t need to die to experience hell… Please never harm animals… never. Spread this post around and help create awareness just from your keyboard. Please help.
Tsem Rinpoche
Named the sun or honey bear because of the crescent shape on the chest and also because they have long tongues and like to lick on honey!
No, it’s not a horror movie.
This bear was caught wandering around a village….
An incision was made to open him up…
The bladder was found and emptied out…
The search for the gall bladder continues…
A slit was made into the stomach…
This bear was killed in the village because he was apparently killing and eating the villagers’ livestock…you can see that it’s all fruit in his stomach.
There is also a green plastic bag – our actions affect others. Next time you throw rubbish onto the ground, do think twice…
I guess this guy found what he was looking for… a bloody organ filled with fluid…
He opened up a living being for one organ… all for greed
This is another sun bear pinned down to the ground, you can see that his eyes are wide open while a group of people are trying to extract his bile
Dried gall bladder
An iron corset on a sun bear…
This is the bear bile that is extracted and sold all around the world. They sell them in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada… and many other places, but predominantly in those countries…
You don’t want to be caught in a place like this.
Life is really a nightmare that entails fear, stress, depression, hopelessness and sufferings to the weak and powerless. To these sufferers, like the sun bears and the honey bears, as the blog said, they can only squirm and shut their eyes tightly and pretend they are in a nightmare horror dream, but never be able to awaken in realty, except to experience through hell of tortures and intensed pains until the last drop of their bile has been extracted out, ” to provide cheaper, more sanitary and healtheir alternatives for the benefit of human beings and their extensived profits of greed”!! Worldwide powerful authorities and/or governmental control of countries’ laws which prohibited the legality of such trade under the appendix of the convention of international trade of endangered species of wild Fauna and flora(cities), should shut down such illegal business of bear farms, and severedly prosecute the illegal sales or purchases of these animal products in the market irrespective. As declared by Dr. Jill Robinson, Founder of Animals Asia Foundations, that even legal bear bile producers are circumventing domestic and international regulations by exporting internationally, should take drastic measure to close down such business to save the bears from ultimate extinction!! “Om mani padmi hum.”
Reading this made me realize that I need to know where my medicines come from. Knowing or not knowingly we may be supporting their actions which create harm and suffering. We would inadvertently have to bear some of the negative karma since the product was made for us consumers.
i felt faint, just looking at the pictures; i felt like crying – i cannot imagine how people could be so cruel! i dare not imagine the karmic retributions the perpetrators will face in future! Om Mani Peme Hung for the victims and perpetrators. We must really tell more others to stop buying the stuff!
Ignorance is so deep that people can’t differentiate what is right and what is wrong anymore. Some people still think that torturing animals to feed selfish needs is normal and animals exist to serve that need. On the other hand to let go of lucrative business opportunity to make money even if it means being humane and kindness to other beings does not make business sense. Imagine IPO for a company that rear bears for their bile! This is cruelty and selfishness beyond words.
This is ridiculously cruel! I really cant imagine how could these cold-blooded human beings could do such things to other beings like animals?! We, human, because of greed, these animals are forced to live the way we want and could die anytime without knowing. How unfair? Animals do have the right to live also!
It seems that IPO wants to expand rapidly by increasing 3x numbers of existing bears, which also means that the market requirements are also increasing..This is so scary…I hope certain legal actions can be enforced in China to stop such animal cruelty. Compassion should take over ignorance.