CHENGDU, Sichuan Province, China – More than 30 shops from four Chinese pharmacy chains have become the first retailers to join a new Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) campaign to end the use of bear-bile products in traditional Chinese medicine. It’s none too soon.

Thirty-three drug stores in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, have adorned their doors and counters with stickers that proclaim: “We don’t sell bear-bile products.” Folks from the AAF’s nearby Moon Bear Rescue Centre visited the Furong, Chengdu Super, Dahua and Guangpeng Pharmacies, handing out stickers and buying leftover bear bile. They burned the bile on the street outside, attracting notice from pedestrians.

AAF founder Jill Robinson says the sticker crusade began on the recent anniversary of the cancer death of Andrew, the first moon bear her organization ever rescued. “This gentle, forgiving bear provides the face of our campaign,” she said. “He’s a perfect symbol of his majestic species and a tragic reminder of all that’s wrong with the bile industry.

“Many pharmacies aren’t aware that they sell endangered wildlife products. These 33 shops set a great example. By refusing to sell bear parts they preserve the essence of traditional Chinese medicine -- healing in harmony with nature. They also help to protect endangered bears.”

One pharmacy agreed to display two jars, one holding a healthy moon-bear liver, the other a liver diseased after long bile extraction. People knowing how ill the bears become should shun the bile.

For centuries, bear bile has been considered an anti-inflammatory. In the 1980s, “farmers’ in China and Korea began to cage and “milk” the bears by carving a permanent hole in each animal’s abdomen. Bile drips from the gall bladder through the infected hole. The bears stay in cages the size of their bodies.

Practitioners call this free-drip method “humane”. But many rescued bears have abdominal abscesses and pus-infected bile. Pathologists examining such bears’ gall bladders warn against consuming the bile.

The Chinese pharmacopeia lists 54 substitutes for bear bile. Synthetic options work too. So no one really needs the bile.

Ideally, more Chinese retailers will join the AAF campaign. The trendsetting stores in Chengdu have taken a significant, although overdue, step in the right direction.

For more information: www.animalsasia.org

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