Imagine being confined to a cage so small that you can’t move. There are bars at your front, beneath you, at either side. You are trapped in this living hell for 15/20 years or more until you die.

On farms across China some 10,000 Asiatic black bears (referred to as Moon bears because of the crescent shaped fur on their chests) are still kept in these hell holes to satisfy the insatiable consumer demand for bear bile in traditional oriental medicine and other consumer goods.

The bears are milked for their bile through rusting metal catheters pushed deep into their gall bladders, or via equally cruel "free-drip" holes in their abdomens, where bile and infection constantly drip out.

The bile is used in traditional medicine for a range of complaints including fever, liver disease and sore eyes - yet more than 50 synthetic and herbal alternatives are readily available. It is illegal for bear products to be exported from China, but the black market trade is thriving.

In July 2000, the charity Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) signed a landmark agreement with the Chinese authorities to rescue 500 bears in Sichuan province, to work towards the elimination of bear farming in China and to promote the herbal alternatives to bear bile.

The farmers are compensated financially so they can either retire or set up in another business. But many claim that a new catheter-free, free-drip method of bile extraction ¬involving the creation of a permanent hole in the abdomen ¬ is painless for the bears and that the industry, therefore, is now “humane�. The truth is, the trade is as brutal as ever and you only have to visit the website www.animalsasia.org to see why.

Consumers in China, Japan and Korea have the highest demand for bear bile. Bear parts, bile powder and bile products are also found in Australia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the US and Canada. The bile is used in traditional medicine for a range of complaints including fever, liver disease and sore eyes. Yet synthetic and herbal alternatives are readily available.

Two years ago, the European Parliament in Brussels launched a campaign to urge the Chinese government to end bear farming by 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics. The farming continues across China and so does the terrible suffering.

In June, a delegation from the AAF will visit Merseyside as part of its 2008 UK Roadshow to raise awareness of the plight of these noble creatures and the efforts being made to bring about an end to the barbaric practice of bile farming. Liverpool's oldest Chinese restaurant the Yuet Ben in Upper Duke Street will welcome the delegates, including the charity's founder Jill Robinson, on 24th June during the Liverpool leg of the tour.

AAF celebrates its tenth anniversary on 08/08/08, coinciding with the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics when the eyes of the world will be on China – a country which has much to be ashamed of.

Here is an eyewitness account of a recent AAF bear rescue.
“One emaciated bear brought to the AAF’s rescue centre in Chengdu was dead on arrival, his body still warm. One died of prior injuries and nine more have been euthanised. Each was riddled with chronic, liver cancer, as well as a litany of other agonising ailments. All were in impossibly small cages, all skeletal, wounded in various ways, and terrified of what would happen in this next stage of their lives. Some are blind, some have shattered teeth and grotesquely ulcerated gums, some have shocking necrotic wounds ¬ their flesh literally rotting down to the bone. Most arrived with open wounds in their abdomens from the free-drip method of bile extraction, with some leaking bile, blood and pus. The number of bears in such an atrocious condition was unprecedented.�

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