A real "mama grizzly" hero
I feel very guilty eating meat because most meat comes from animals raised in atrocious conditions and living lives of suffering.
But Chinese bear bile farms are beyond abominable:
The bears were kept in a farm located in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall bladders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed.
The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bears' abdomen and gall bladder.
As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis.
The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by hitting their stomach as they are unable to bear the pain.
I knew about this horrifying practice but did not know bears tortured by it often try to kill themselves. And I’m powerfully moved by the intelligence and love purportedly displayed by one bear mother:
a mother bear broke out its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punctured its stomach to milk the bile…
Unable to free the cub from its restraints, the mother hugged the cub and eventually strangled it.
It then dropped the cub and ran head-first into a wall, killing itself.
How can we humans conflate ourselves with “humane” and “humanity” when we regularly torture other animals and, sometimes, even other human beings?
Posted by James on Friday, August 12, 2011