Vietnam has agreed to rescue about a thousand bears from farms across the country in an effort to shut down the longstanding practice of extracting their bile, which critics say is inhumane and bad for the long-term survival of bears in the wild.
The Administration of Forestry signed a memorandum of understanding today with the Hong Kong-based conservation nonprofit Animals Asia, saying that the two would work together to remove the bears to sanctuaries. That agreement follows another made in 2015 between the nonprofit and the Vietnamese Medical Association, which pledged that by 2020 traditional practitioners would stop prescribing bear bile to treat ailments.
Bile, a brownish-yellow liquid found in the gallbladder that helps bears digest fat, has been used in Asian medicine for more than a thousand years. Research has shown that it can help treat some liver conditions (though alternatives exist), but bile has no proven benefit for hangovers, cancer, and other conditions it’s widely sold to remedy.
Taking bile from the bodies of sun bears and Asiatic black bears, also called moon bears—the animals most targeted for the trade—often involves repeated invasive sessions. Some bears even live with a catheter permanently hooked up to their gallbladders. An investigation by VICE News in 2015 found that bears on farms in northern Vietnam were thin, missing patches of hair, and sitting in cramped, rusty cages.
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