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How Beautiful are these Teddy Bears


The Immense and Completely Unnecessary Suffering of Bears in Asia

After a tip off about the horrific bear bile farms Jill went under cover. Breaking away from a group tour, she found herself in a dark, damp, filthy basement. The scene that was to later shock the world, unfolded before her eyes she saw bears imprisoned in rusting cages, no bigger than their own bodies, with gaping wounds where 7 inch metal catheters had pierced their abdomens.

As Jill reeled in horror, she felt a gentle touch on her shoulder - a desperate Moon Bear stretched out its paw towards her, making a silent plea for help from unblinking, soulful eyes.

Moon bears, imprisoned on bile farms across China and other parts of South East Asia, are milked for their bile, through catheters crudely implanted in to their gall bladders and more recently through a ‘free drip’ method that leaves a permanent open and infected wound in their abdomen. The pain is unimaginable.

This bile is used in some traditional Chinese medicines, even though equally effacious herbal alternatives exist. It is also used in soap, cosmetics, wine and beer.

Asiatic black bears, commonly called ‘moon’ bears due to the yellow crescent moon shaped fur across their chests are a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) listed endangered species with less than 25,000 left in the wild across the world.


Bear having had its gall bladder milked
In the 1980s in a misguided attempt to stop the harvesting of gall bladders in the wild the Chinese government licensed bear breeding on bile farms. This has led to far greater cruelty and has not stopped the hunters trapping bears in the wild.

After her discovery, Jill embarked on a long process of negotiations with the Chinese government. In 1995, she secured the release of the original bears she had discovered in 1993 and 5 years later founded the Animals Asia Foundation (AAF).

Today there are some 7000 bears on farms across China; many of these bears are imprisoned in coffin-likes cages for over twenty years before suffering an agonizingly slow death due to infection and tumours.

It’s a cliché but ‘words really cannot describe’ the pain, injuries, physical and mental suffering endured by these intelligent and gentle creatures. Some bears have grown in to the metal bars, others have been deliberately declawed and detoothed, many have open head wounds caused by banging their heads against the cage bars in a desperate attempt to stimulate their intelligent minds and somehow ease their suffering.

Some, like handsome Jasper, are doomed to lie their entire lives flat on the floor of their ‘crush’ cages, squeezed down by a devise containing them during milking and where the farmer cannot be bothered to lift up the crush bar again.


Jasper before Rescue
In July 2000, we signed a landmark agreement with the Chinese authorities to rescue 500 moon bears in Sichuan Province and to work towards the end of bear farming in China. This agreement was the first accord between the Chinese government and any outside animal welfare organisation.

To date we have rescued nearly 200 bears that now live at our sanctuary in Chengdu, Southern China. To close down a farm and revoke a bear farm license that ensures a farmer cannot set up elsewhere we have to pay a fair compensation to the farmer. Groups across the UK, Australia, Germany and the US have got together to fundraise to rescue individual bears. It makes for some oddly named bears at the sanctuary –‘Western Super Bear’, ‘Somerset’, ‘Quantocks’ to name a few.


Jasper NOW Rescued!
Our sanctuary employs mainly Chinese workers, as well as bringing prosperity to the area and raising awareness, it has been built to be as harmonious as possible in the natural landscape.

Once recovered from their injuries bears move from the quarantine block to the bamboo-forested area, before this most had never walked on grass, felt the sun or rain.

Here they have the option of snuggling down in their dens, furnished with ‘hanging basket’ beds and stimulating toys or roaming and playing with the other bears. This is rarely observed in the wild, as Moon Bears are solitary creatures. This is just one of the surprises of working with the Moon Bears; the others include their intelligence, gentleness, sense of fund and immensely forgiving natures.

Some of our bears need extra special care such as blind Snoopy who arrived thrashing her head against the bars of her crush cage, blood oozing from her open wounds. Snoopy joined frail little Franzi and brain damaged Rupert in the special care bear section of the sanctuary known as the ‘secret garden’.

Franzi, now in her late 80s in human terms, weighs only 50 pounds compared to most bears weighing in at 260 pounds. She is stunted from living in the same tiny cage since she was a cub.

"Deliberately de-clawed, de-toothed and a horrible pus-infected wound in her abdomen showed all too clearly her life of being milked like a machine. More than anything, her eyes said it all - and every so often she'd look up from staring at the floor, look sadly and intensely into our eyes for a few seconds before turning back to the corner to the cage, retreating into her world of pain and despair." Jill remarked soon after Franzi was first rescued.

Franzi also shares the secret garden with her best pal Rupert – really a ‘bear with very little brain’ as he was permanently brain damaged from an infection caused by the bear milking process.


The Amazing Jill with Emma
As well as our work in rescuing bears and campaigning for the end of Bear bile farming once and for all we also work across South East Asia on a number of animal welfare issues such as ending the cat and dog meat and fur trade through our ‘friends or fur and food education campaigns.

Using the concept of ‘animal welfare through people welfare’, we founded ‘Dr. Dog, the first animal therapy programme of its kind in Asia. Here our 300 therapy dogs visit patients in hospitals, schools and care homes providing comfort and friendship. This along with our Professor Paws programme where dogs are working with children in schools to promote literacy promotes the idea of dogs and friends and helpers not food and fur.

We also provide small grants and help to local communities and grassroots projects, monitor live animal market issues such as SARS and work with medical practitioners to promote ‘healing without harming’.

This June and July Jill will be in the UK to talk about the our Moon Bear rescue as well as our plans to build a new sanctuary in Vietnam where bear bile farming has been recently outlawed and our other animal welfare programmes and campaigns to end the cat and dog meat and fur trade.

Our Roadshow will raise awareness and funds to further out work. We will be holding a series of vegetarian dinners and talks with Jill around the UK. Tickets range in price from £10 to £35. We hope you can make it.

Birmingham 23 June,
West Coker, Somerset 24 June
Torquay 25 June
Nottingham 27 June
Manchester 28 June
Bristol 29 June and
London 3 July

Tickets can be booked from our website www.animalsasia.org/UKroadshow or by calling 0870 241 3723.

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