China has also agreed to stop issuing licenses to new farms. Today there are still about 7, bears suffering on farms in China.
Although bear farming was declared illegal in in South Korea, over 1, bears still remain on farms where farmers are holding them in the hope that legal farming will resume. There is also thought to be a black market in bile between South Korea and China. The situation in Vietnam is improving, as the Vietnamese government made a commitment in to slowly phase out bear farming. However, the methods used in Vietnam are even more inhumane than those used elsewhere. Bears in Vietnamese farms may undergo multiple surgeries to extract bile from their gallbladders, from which they usually die after three or four surgeries.
Other bears have their bile extracted by having their gallbladders punctured with long needles. Today there are still 3, bears on farms in Vietnam. Although bear farming was originally intended to protect wild populations from over-hunting, it has since become clear that it is having the opposite effect by stimulating the demand for bear bile as a result of lowered prices. Before the existence of bear farms the demand in China was about kilos annually.
Today the demand has risen dramatically, to about 4, kilos annually. Finally, wild bears still serve as an illegal source of bears to stock existing farms.
This is evidenced by a rescue group which found twenty percent of their bears missing limbs from traps. The Chinese government maintains that bile farming does not threaten wild bear populations, and that wild bears are plentiful.
The demand for bear bile is fueled by a thriving international illegal trade. Bear bile and gallbladders have been smuggled across borders packed in coffee to hide their smell, and dipped in chocolate to pass as chocolate figs. These bears, which are still plentiful in North America, are now being targeted to fill the demand for bear bile as the number of Asiatic black bears declines.
American black bears are also being targeted as a result of the increasing Asian population in the United States and Canada, which has created a demand for bear bile domestically. During a three-year sting titled Operation SOUP, 52 people were arrested and gallbladders were seized in Virginia. Another investigation in Oregon led the police to bring racketeering charges against a ring that poached an estimated 50 to bears per year for a decade. It has been estimated that 40, American black bears are legally killed in North America each year, and it is likely that an equivalent number are illegally poached for their gallbladders and paws.
Killing cubs that have not yet reproduced may rush the species into a threatened state. American black bears are being poached both for international smuggling of their parts, as well as for sale in traditional Chinese medicine shops in the Unites States.
Asiatic black bear parts are also smuggled into the United States, as consumers apparently value Asian bear bile over American bear bile. No bear products were found in Washington, D. The investigators suspected shopkeepers of passing farmed gallbladders for wild gallbladders which demand a higher price.
They also noted that it was difficult to determine the origin of the bear products, as some shopkeepers claimed the origin was American bears, with others claiming Chinese or Russian bears.
Some shopkeepers knew the laws on selling bear parts in their state, while others were either unaware of the law or operated in flagrant disregard of the law. Some shopkeepers mentioned that bear farming was cruel and suggested herbal alternatives. While bear farming is legal and encouraged in China, killing wild bears and trading bear parts internationally is illegal. Articles address wildlife trade by prohibiting the sale, purchase, export, import, or transport of wildlife or their products.
China law imposes heavy criminal penalties for violation of these articles, including the death penalty. However, few violators are caught or prosecuted because these laws are rarely enforced. Appendix I encompasses species threatened with extinction. Trade in these species or their parts is permitted only in exceptional circumstances.
The Asiatic black bear has been listed on Appendix I since Appendix II encompasses species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid the species from becoming threatened.
The American black bear is listed on Appendix II, which means that international trade in American black bear parts is legal, although it is regulated by a permit requirement. As bear gallbladders and bile from different species are virtually indistinguishable, traders are able to illegally trade Asiatic black bear parts by falsely stating to Customs officials or other authorities that they derive from American black bears, or other Appendix II bears.
International cooperation is necessary for CITES to be effective in combating the illegal trade in bear parts. As signatories, these countries acknowledge that trade in Appendix I species is illegal.
However, many CITES parties have failed to implement the trade controls which are necessary to enforce the agreement. China is even looking for ways around the treaty, as the CITES Management Authority in China has created a list of standards for bear farms with the goal of permitting registered farms to trade Asiatic black bear parts internationally.
Bottles of bear bile Animals Asia. Most U. But because of the messy patchwork of state laws and interstate and international trade, prosecution is sometimes tricky. American poaching continues , driven by a ravenous market. From an NPR story on the subject :. The U. Fish and Wildlife Service says grizzly and black bear poaching for Asian markets has been a problem nationwide for years, with recent investigations and prosecutions in the Pacific Northwest and several Southern states.
In the meantime, animal rights groups have shifted their focus to convincing practitioners -- doctors in traditional medicine -- to stop recommending authentic bear bile to their patients.
This post was written by Rosie Cima ; you can follow her on Twitter here. To get occasional notifications when we write blog posts, please sign up for our email list. Learn how to create content marketing that performs. Read More ». Turn your company data into content marketing people actually like.
Learn More ». In Data We Trust. Why is Bear Bile So Expensive? Published Apr 15, Books from Priceonomics. Everything is Bullshit.
Hipster Business Models. The Content Marketing Handbook. In western medicine it has been tested and proven effective in treatment of liver cirrhosis, to dissolve gallstones and on a trial basis to treat hyperlipemia.
It synthesized from cow bile can be found in your local pharmacy under the brand name "Ursofalk". It is marketed in the U. As with rice, mushrooms, pearls, and blueberries, even though there are domestically grown or synthesized products on the market and thriving businesses have developed, the natural or wild grown, will generally bring a higher price. In the case of ursodeoxycholoic acid, there are three major sources; The wild, from free roaming bears, the synthesized from cow bile and most recently a farmed product tapped from live bears held in captivity.
Much the same as we recover estrogen from pregnant mares. The value of bear galls is a point of much debate with extremely high prices being quoted. Examples are: "Tiny quantities of bile from the gall of endangered Asiatic black bears can be worth up to 18 times the price of gold in the retail markets of Asia.
It is important to note that a gall of less than 10 grams is of very little value. A larger gall of 20 grams or larger, is worth more per gram. Galls of Asian bears are apparently larger and a weight of 60 grams is often used whereas a 25 to 30 gram gall in North America is considered above average. As well, the gall of an Asian bear, regardless of size, is worth considerably more than the gall of a North American black bear. All Canadian jurisdictions and most US states report "stable or increasing" populations of black bears.
The main concern is habitat loss and fragmentation in some American states. The annual legal harvest in Canada is about 25, while that of the U. In , the N. It has been suggested that the CITES regulations are ineffective in that the illegal trade of parts has simply moved underground and the CITES permit has become a vehicle for laundering the parts of bears that have been taken illegally.
In the Chief of the U.
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