Last month saw Professor Nat Waran, veterinary surgeon
Heather Bacon and welfare veterinary nurse Hayley Walters, visit Vietnam to
deliver a 3 day Veterinary Education conference at Hanoi Agricultural
University.
After landing in Hanoi the trio had just enough time before
the conference started, to visit a sanctuary full of Moon and Sun bears that
had been rescued from the bile farm industry.
Bear bile has been used in traditional medicine throughout
Asia for thousands of years. Traditionally the bile would be taken from the
gall bladders of killed wild bears but in the last few decades, bear bile
farming was set up and crude extraction techniques were developed. Farming for
bile usually involves keeping bears in small cages for their entire lives and,
in Vietnam, sedating them and inserting a long needle into the gall bladder to
extract the bile despite the practice now being illegal and synthetic
alternatives to bear bile being available.
Bears are either bred in captivity to supply the farm trade
or mothers are shot, cubs snatched and then trafficked around Asia for the
industry. Animals Asia, a Hong Kong based charity, rescues these bears from
farms and after extensive surgery and treatment, rehabilitates them into semi
natural enclosures.
Heather and Hayley both used to work for Animals Asia so
were revisiting old friends at the bear sanctuary but it was Nat’s first time
there and she was overwhelmed by the experience.
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“I was very impressed with the level of dedication that the international and local staff showed towards these hundred plus bears at the sanctuary. And I was pleased to see how happy these bears now appeared in their enriched surroundings, despite the appalling conditions they had previously lived in, some for more than 30 years, and the painful procedures and in come cases permanent damage, they had endured on the farms prior to confiscation.”
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