UPDATE JULY 2013 - Headline reads:  China to End Bear Bile Farms
Please continue to keep the pressure on to make sure it does end!

This 3+ minute video explains the horrors these bears endure in China.

by Betsy Seeton

If you don't know these egregious acts of inhumanity are being perpetrated against bears, how will things ever change? That's the reason I post this stuff. I know it's easier not knowing about this hell on earth suffering but these animals deserve their cries to be heard.  The stories of abuse that bears endure -- sometimes for their entire 25 year life -- are beyond comprehension. The abuse is so outrageously painful for these bears that it leaves me both enraged and numb all at the same time.  

In 2011 when I first wrote this article, the estimated price of a bear gallbladder on the black market is $10,000 according to Andrew Revelos writing for Marine Corps Base Quantico - Quantico Sentry OnLine. Ounce for ounce, gallbladders have ranked as some of the highest commodities on the black market. In 2009 bear bile was  estimated at 2 pounds for $400,000. (Source)

STRAIGHT FROM FREETHEBEARS.ORG:
Since 1995 Free the Bears Fund has provided support to a wide range of projects across the globe; from the rehabilitation of orphaned bear cubs in the Russian Far East to surveying wild Spectacled bears in Ecuador. As Free the Bears has grown we have focused more intensely on the Sun bears and Asiatic black bears of South-east Asia and the Sloth bears of India. 

By creating partnerships that are tailored to each individual country and situation we have been able to support a wide range of projects in our six priority countries; Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Despite these countries being geographically close to one another, the threats to bears vary widely and as such our responses encompass a wide range of strategies including environmental awareness, sustainable livelihoods, increased enforcement and research and protection of wild bear populations.

 Our support ranges from direct intervention on-the-ground to providing much-needed funds to local organisations carrying out bear conservation work in line with our goals. To find out more about the various projects that we support, please select from the menu to the left. VISIT FREETHEBEARS.ORG

 From an interview with Mary Hutton by  Claudette Vaughan reported on the ABOLISTIONIST-ONLINE.COM:

 The Bear Paw Soup is considered a delicacy in Cambodia. Some bears are taken because the meat is tender. The cub again is taken from the wild, the mother most likely killed. The cubs are put in a cage. This is not a dish specific to Cambodian either. The Koreans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Taiwanese all go and order their bowls of Bear Paw Soup. The paw is cut off and the stump is sealed in hot coals and on oil to stop the bleeding. That paw is served as a delicacy. It’s called “Braised Bear Paw Soup” served with onions and garlic and it can fetch around US$200-$300 dollars per serve.This has been stopped to a huge extent by a big advertising awareness campaign that we worked with the group “Wild Aid” who are up there as well. 70% of this has now been stopped. There was one restaurant that didn’t comply. He was closed down by the Mayor and threatened with if he serves anything like this again, including any exotic pieces such as tigers, he would not be allowed to reopen. Due to this initiate it’s not very often now that you see a bowl of bear paw soup around on a menu.

If that one bear still survives having it’s paw cut off slowly each paw is taken by other people. Not so much now, because the trade is dying out, but that poor bear will go on until all four paws have gone. The bear then immersed in a boiling hot vat of water because people like to see the bear and ensure the meat is fresh before eating him.

We have made such a fuss about the Cambodian Paw Soup issue however we also know that bears are farmed in Vietnam and are trapped in other sorts of ways. I can tell you it is very distressing. 

The paws of a bear are cut off while the bear is alive and used to make bear paw soup.... 

STRAIGHT FROM http://www.greenmuze.com/animals/wild/768-bear-bile-farming.html

 Posing as buyers and suppliers in the illegal wildlife trade, eco warriors have taken hidden cameras where some of the most heinous crimes against nature are taking place: on bear bile farms in China.

Other Earth saviors have packed unhidden cameras when they've gone on rescue missions to record the conditions of the bears they save and the ones they have to tragically leave behind. These are their photos, their stories, and the history of bear bile farming. READ FULL REPORT WITH MORE UNDERCOVER PHOTOS OF ABUSE

I urge each of you reading this to help in the campaign to end this abuse by passing along this link and other information from organizations dedicated to saving bears. Also sign petitions, write letters, and reach out in your own creative way. The thought of cutting off the paw of a bear for 'bear paw soup' leaves me so disillusioned by the humans on both ends of the supply/demand chain. Who would cage these beautiful animals for a lifetime to take bile from them? What kind of souls are doing these things? Who are you people??  

FROM: World Society for the Protection of AnimalsThe reality of bear farming is that an estimated 14,000 bears are being kept in tiny cages across Asia, starved and dehydrated, and milked for their bile. The bile removed from farmed bears is thick and infected, containing blood, pus, urine and faeces and is collected in unsterilised basins.

Many of these endangered species are captured illegally from the wild.  Some are drugged, restrained and have their abdomens jabbed with unsterilised four inch needles until their gall bladders are punctured to release the bile. Others are milked through open infected abdominal wounds, or catheters made from latex or rusty metal.

They are pumped full of antibiotics and other drugs just to keep them alive. Most of them develop massive infections, multiple diseases and malignant tumours that ultimately kill them. They are often kept in tiny cages for up to 30 years – the space is so small that they can’t even turn around."

This is how Gareth Patterson described a scene that some of you will recognise from The Cook Report TV documentary on canned hunting. (Source captiveanimals.org) But you don't have to go to Africa to kill the animals of your dreams. You can do it right here in America. There are over 1000 canned hunting sites available for your killing pleasure in the U.S. All kinds of rare, exotic animals are fenced in on commercial hunting grounds that you can shoot just about any which way you choose -- for a price. Zebras cost somewhere around $4,500 to put a bullet through. Lodging costs are on top of the kill price. Killing a Transcaspian Urial Sheep will set you back upwards of around $17,000 while a Siberian Ibex is more than $19,000.

The Blah Blah Blah Hunting Lodge advertises that their hunting adventure: 
".... allows the opportunity to hunt and harvest the Trophy Zebra you'll want to hang on your wall...this hunt will offer 100% opportunity for a Mature Zebra. Year round, we offer hunts for beautiful Grants Zebra. There are no seasonal restrictions on hunting the Zebra in Texas, which makes it a suitable trophy year round."


( I guess the new word for kill is "harvest" .... )

I grew up eating elk and venison my entire childhood courtesy of my father who was an avid big game hunter. My brothers and I, along with my mother, helped pack out the meat from the forest and my father gutted/cleaned and packaged the meat in our basement using a band saw. But one thing he would never do, and would never support, is canned hunting. He hunted to put food on our table. He loved the hunt. He really did. But he told me if he had money he would not have hunted. He did it to provide for his family. He would not have done it for the joy of killing. 

The caption for this posting is what some or even most canned hunters feel. Trophy hunters often have their wish list -- a bucket list if you will -- of animals they want to kill during their lifetime. I cannot fathom this mindset. 

Canned hunters must have a perverted sense of joy and twisted sense of accomplishment  along with what I can only describe as scary egos. These exotic animals are transported from their natural habitat and some are farm raised to continue the species for future hunting. They are on grounds that have fences. They are not living a natural life and they die a quite unnatural death. I will never understand the soul of these people. How they stand by their trophy kill with those "look-at-me" grins  thinking they are powerful or strong or whatever it is that they believe they are. The whole concept of canned hunting is beyond my comprehension.

Canned hunting seems so obviously wrong that it feels almost silly making that point. Hunters I know would never go to a commercial lodge where animals had been stocked like fish in a pond and where the grounds are fenced. There's no real challenge. It's not 'real' hunting. It's disgraceful. The whole thing is a barbaric, inhumane way to make money and be entertained at the great expense of amazing wild creatures. "Harvesting" animals on canned hunts should not only be illegal it should be viewed as  horrendously shameful.