Dear Sirs
We, the undersigned, respect other creatures which co-exist on our planet.
Could you please advise us what the situation is regarding bear bile farming in China, Vietnam, Pakistan and other Asian countries?
You will know that Vietnam announced their intentions in 2005 to phase out bear farming. Can you please tell me how this is going and when you will actually bring this abhorrent practice to an end?
Further, have the 80 illegally held Asiatic Black Bears been released into sanctuary yet? The Principal government of Quang Ninh was hesitating earlier this year to confiscate them from bear farms. This clearly goes against Vietnam new government regulations, the Memorandum of Understanding with WSPA and the government itself committing to phase out bear farms.
I cannot bear to think of these distressed, miserable creatures in crippling, agonizing pain, not just from the constant open wound and the gruesome bile extraction process they have to endure up to three times a day, but from the shockingly cruel practice of permanently confining them to an iron barred 'coffin'. My heart cries out for these gentle, majestic and defenceless creatures and for them to be released into freedom where they belong.
I can only ask you to please imagine yourself locked in such a coffin, little bigger than yourself, where you are kept ALL of your life. Denied any freedom to express natural behaviour and constricted to the point of being unable to make simple body movements - you would be better off dead. This never ending mental and physical frustration and suffering would be total and utter torture, and is now, as I write, for these bears.
As you will know, there are alternatives to bear bile in the 21st century. I and the majority of intelligent western people cannot understand why others would want to consume something that has been produced through sheer pain and misery, when there are substitutes. To witness and be the cause of distressed animals in acute pain is just sadistic, the mark of a society bereft of compassion and the practice should be brought to a rapid end.
I am well-travelled and had at one point wanted to visit China, Vietnam and Pakistan - I am sure there is a great wealth of history and much to see. However I, and many other westerners, cannot ever visit countries where this type of cruelty exists and Asian governments are not only fully aware of it, but sanction it by granting licences to the bear farms. How can this occur in a modern 21st century world? This distressing, inhuman and barbaric practice is totally unnecessary, and the continuance of it is wholly unacceptable.
I do hope you can give me and my fellow animal welfare supporters a glimmer of hope on behalf of these pitiful bears.Many thanks