Text by Ian Bongso-Seldrup

Bear bile has been used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for three millennia – traditionally extracted from bears when they were killed. But even with the introduction of “more practical” methods – extraction from live bears – in the 1980s, Chinese scientists have long sought to find synthetic alternatives to bear bile.

Efforts to create synthetic bear bile began as early as 1983, when the Chinese health ministry approved a research project led by the Shenyang College of Pharmacy (since renamed Shenyang Pharmaceutical University). Some initial progress was made, but the team lost its funding in 1995, the project reportedly taken over by another team from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

The development of key technology for in vitro cultivation of bear bile began in 2008. A research project comparing bear bile with more than 100 animal bile components found avian bile was most similar to bear bile. By using avian bile as a base and adding two enzymes present in bear bile, a composition could be achieved that was about 95 percent similar to bear bile. In partnership with Chongqing University and Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai Kaibao – the biggest shareholder of Chongqing Kingbear – completed preclinical research on in vitro cultivation of bear bile and subsequently undertook clinical trials at the Center for Drug Evaluation under the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), China’s top drug regulator.

In December 2022, a formula for synthetic bear bile powder submitted by Shanghai Kaibao, Chongqing Kingbear and another Hainan pharmaceutical company received approval from the Hainan Medical Products Administration (HMPA), the medicines standards board of Hainan Province.

But when the companies sought to launch the product nationally, they hit a wall. As the new national medicine registration system introduced in 2020 had omitted the categories of “synthetic TCM” and references to “substitutes”, the product would have to go through the registration process as a new medicine – which could take up to 20 years. By August 2023, the HMPA had rescinded its approval for the synthetic bear bile powder, without explanation.

The Chinese government insists it supports research into substitutes for rare and endangered animals used in TCM. In June 2023, the NMPA announced it would prioritise the review of promising alternatives for medicines using such ingredients. The body has also called for the creation of a regulatory and technical framework for the development of substitutes.

Concerned scientists and animal rights groups can only hope that the priority review and approval process will bring synthetic bear bile to the market sooner, paving the way for a complete ban on live bear bile extraction.

The dormitory phone rings at 6.20am. Faith is dying. Cochrane gets dressed and rushes straight down to the dens. But she’s already too late. By weeks. During the post-mortem, she discovers infection has riddled the bear’s entire body, eating some parts away to the bone. Faith died of septicaemia – blood poisoning. The carcass is stitched up, burnt, and buried in a nearby plot. A small bamboo cross marks where it lies.

Characteristically blithe, a sudden pall falls over Robinson. Slowly she says: “My mother died of septicaemia. My father told me she died screaming in agony. When I heard that bear crying last night… usually they’re aggressive, grumbling. But this bear was just sick. I held its skin and it was paper-thin. Then when it died and Gail cut it open…” Her eyes blink back tears and she is silent.

Standing next to her is Xiao Huang. The stout, 40-year-old mother of three has worked for the Sichuan Forestry Department for 18 years, including 11 years in Liangzhou. “Those farmers!” she puffs. “They treat these bears like money trees – always shaking them to see what will drop off next!” Then she turns to Robinson to comfort her. “Once I raised a pair of panda cubs here. They were sent to Michigan Zoo. I cried at the airport just like you are now. They were like my own children. I used to sneak them into my bed at night and feed them milk. But my supervisor caught me and told me off,” she suddenly giggles as Robinson smiles.

Xiao Huang has been recently employed by AAF as a local supervisor. Like dozens of other forestry workers allowed to reside free at the centre, the state stopped paying her months ago when it ran out of work. For the past three months she has thrown herself with a passion into the rescue programme, and is now a self-appointed foster mother and nurse to the bears. She has no fear of any of the animals and takes no nonsense from the naughty ones.

Xiao Huang’s side-kick is a moon-faced 24-year-old named Xiao Wang – an almost impossible homonym to distinguish if you don’t speak Chinese. The confusion between the two names leads to mirth amongst the Westerners, though the two Xiaos are perhaps more humoured by their mangled attempts at Mandarin.

On his bedroom wall, Xiao Wang has a poster of a giant panda and a formidable library of native wildlife books. He tries to explain that not all Chinese are as cruel as the bear farmers. “They are old and poor and know no better. The younger generations, we are a lot better off than our parents. We can learn to appreciate what we have. There are so many beautiful animals in China,” he points proudly at each picture in his otherwise cold, sparse room. “It would be a shame to lose them.”

Later that night, Cochrane explains the bearbile mystery. “It’s amazing, really. People claim to use it to treat all kinds of things, from liver complaints to sore eyes and skin rashes. But bear bile, especially Asiatic black bear bile, contains high concentrations of UDCA, which has only recently been discovered to prevent gall bladder stones in humans. It doesn’t prevent them in bears, though! Most of them die of liver failure, perhaps as a result of having to produce so much bile. The irony is that most Chinese practitioners these days agree that there are lots of synthetic and herbal alternatives to bear’s bile that are cheaper and as effective. Still it makes you think. The Chinese have known about this for almost 3,000 years…”

It’s 7am in Bear Land. Golden shafts of light filter through the dens as the early-morning mist rises with awakening breath. Steam lifts from the bears’ coats as they shake the dew and settle into a rhythmic rocking motion. Bile continues to drip from their free-flowing catheters.

By 9am, bundles of fresh-cut bamboo tips are brought in for breakfast. The bears snatch and play with the fronds, strewing them about their cages before lying back to feed. For a brief while there is only the mellow crunch of green bamboo… then clang-clang, clang-clang as the stereotypic behaviour starts again.

AAF co-ordinator Boris Chiao can hear it. He’s nursing a hangover. The night before, he, Robinson and Cochrane had met with Sichuan officials to hammer out the issue of compensation for the local bear farmers. They had also questioned why so many sick bears were arriving at the centre. Another cub had died in transit.

After business, the trio was obliged to attend a lavish banquet and engage in the uniquely Chinese custom of one-on-one drinking. One glass for you, one glass for an official. Another glass for you, a glass for another official. And around the table it went…

“I don’t drink,” admits Hong Kong-born Chiao rather sheepishly. “And I can’t stomach Maotai [rice wine]. But they’re our hosts. It’s a custom on the mainland you just have to grin and bare.” Despite his sore head, Chiao has been up since daybreak. He will work tirelessly into the night translating, problem-shooting and organising almost every logistical step of AAF’s huge rescue programme. He will stay behind tomorrow while everyone returns to base in Hong Kong.

But before flying back, Cochrane has a threehour operation to perform. VB – newly adopted and christened “Hairy Mary” – is having her catheter removed. Despite a minor infection, she is a very handsome and healthy 135 kilograms. This may have to do with the discovery during the procedure that the 15 centimetres of metal tube sticking out of her abdomen is not even connected to the gall bladder.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of this new freedripping method, where they pull the gall bladder forward and attach it to the inside of the abdominal wall so that all they have to do is poke it with a needle every time they want to extract bile,” Cochrane says. “The farmers claim it’s more humane because there’s no catheter sticking out. But then they’re re-opening a fresh wound every time, so there’s more chance of infection.”

As Cochrane cuts away, veterinary nurse Kristen Sanderson tattoos the bear’s lip for identification and scales its teeth. One of the premolars will be removed and sent to the United States for ageing. Just then, Robinson walks in with a small crowd who gather around the operating table. She announces she’s just got off the phone with British Airways. “They’re going to start selling teddy bears at their check-in counters with these little ‘Save the Bears’ logos,” she grins. “

Scary Mary bears, you mean,” quips Cochrane, and everyone laughs, for the makeshift theatre with its flickering fluorescent lights has now taken on the relaxed air of a garage party. Staff and volunteers talk and laugh around the operating table. Someone changes the CD player and Heather Small breaks into a tune, “What have you done today to make you feel proud?” And as all their smiling faces turn warmly towards the bear, that’s exactly how you start to feel.

No matter how worthy the cause, rescuing moon bears can be a dispiriting and depressing affair. After a week in Liangzhou with some of the sickest and saddest animals I had ever seen in my life, I was left wondering what real hope did these creatures have after so many years of mistreatment? The answer was 1,500 kilometres away in Panyu.

A two-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong, Panyu is part of Guangdong’s sprawling southern hinterland. Yet here in this nondescript Chinese industrial city lies a tiny retreat for seven fat and jolly moon bears. Donny, Cookie, Elizabeth, Chu-Chu, Digger, Hong and Xie Sheung have lived in this small sanctuary since their release and rehabilitation from the first bear farm to close in nearby Huizhou in 1995. It is a world away from Liangzhou.

After years of abuse, Donny is blind. But as we enter the dens, he rolls playfully out of his straw crib to greet us with a whiff of excitement. Is he happy to sniff new guests? Or is it the basket of fruit Robinson is carrying? Perhaps, a bit of both. His snout appears with a grin just the way you would imagine a dog – a huge, 150kg dog – as he licks our palms like a gentle Rottweiler and sucks a proffered kiwifruit.

We have a long way to go. I have to keep reminding myself of that. It’s not just this year or the next, but the rest of the bears’ lives and perhaps even my own. If you think of it that way, it can seem very daunting. Sometimes you ask yourself what it’s all for. Then you come here and there are no more doubts.

Next to Donny is Cookie. He greets us wagging his head – a stereotypical remnant of his 13 years in a tiny crush cage, as are the scars on his back. He was the most unstable of the seven bears when he first arrived, but is now the most boisterous, play-wrestling and hamming it up with the other males in the large native enclosure outside the dens.

Hong is quieter than the other bears, and is kept mostly to himself. Chu-Chu “the clown” and naughty Elizabeth share a den, and a bit of fun while we’re there – next to Xie Sheung and Digger. Xie Sheung is a little madam, preening and posing before her admirers, waiting for the inevitable performance-pleasing apple to fall into her lap. But even she can’t compete for affections with Digger.

Taking a strawberry in her teeth, Robinson leans through the bars as the bear gently plucks it from her lips with his own, nestling the morsel between huge canine teeth and powerful jaws that could as easily crush a human skull as a piece of fruit. That these animals have learnt to trust so completely the very people who tortured them is overwhelming.

“If ever an animal had something to teach, then surely these bears have shown us the ultimate lesson in forgiveness,” says Robinson. Yet she herself has shown that animal cruelty elicits not just the worst, but the best in mankind too.

As we leave Panyu that afternoon, having fed and stroked our fill of bears, Robinson turns to me and says: “We have a long way to go. I have to keep reminding myself of that. It’s not just this year or the next, but the rest of the bears’ lives and perhaps even my own. If you think of it that way, it can seem very daunting. Sometimes you ask yourself what it’s all for. Then you come here and there are no more doubts.”

One week later in Liangzhou, Andrew the three-legged moon bear – the first of the 500 to be rescued – is released into his native enclosure to take the first tentative steps of the rest of his life.

THE BEAR BILE COMEBACK

Thanks to the tireless work of activists like Jill Robinson and organisations like Animals Asia Foundation (AAF), and with the Chinese government’s apparent commitment to ending the practice of bear bile farming, the popularity of bear bile products in China had been in steady decline – that is, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

A scientific research paper published in Nature in December 2022 found the ursodeoxycholic acid, or UDCA, that is present in significant quantities in bear bile, might help prevent the SARS-CoV-2 virus from infecting human cells. The paper, led by researchers from the United Kingdom and Germany, noted that UDCA was “widely used, accessible, cost effective, off patent and easy to manufacture and store”, suggesting that the compound could have “an important role in the management of COVID-19”.

In the wake of the report’s publication, pharmaceutical companies involved in the production of UDCA products have seen the price of their shares jump – even in the absence of any clinical trials. Several studies have since concluded that UDCA may indeed serve as a novel drug for the prevention of COVID-19.

Unfortunately, while China is among many countries producing synthesised UDCA, bear bile is still a major source, and the recent scientific findings have led to a boom in the fortunes of companies harvesting and selling bear bile products. With demand soaring, the price has reportedly surged from around 200 yuan (USD30) per gram to as much as 500 yuan (USD70) per gram.

“We understand that the number of bears in pens at breeding farms continues to increase because the article in Nature drew in more investment that has been used to buy new bears,” says Wang Feng, chairman of Chongqing Kingbear Biotechnology, a company established in 2019 to develop synthetic UDCA. “Although the industry is taking a low profile, it’s obviously expanding.” According to data collected by the company, in April 2023, more than 40,000 people purchased synthetic bear bile on Chinese e-commerce platform Tmall, an increase of almost 24 times year on year, with sales jumping over 30-fold to 8.16 million yuan (USD1.1 million).

One of the farms quietly expanding their operations across China is Raoping Black Bear Farm, nestled in a forest not far from the city of Chaozhou in eastern Guangdong Province. The farm’s sales hall displays gift boxes of bear bile powder carrying a price tag of 600 yuan (USD85) per 1.5 grams.

The farm houses around 500 bears in total, with about 100 mature black bears held in a facility around the size of two tennis courts, each confined in an iron cage measuring around one cubic metre. The daily bile extraction process begins at 11am. It’s 2024, but nothing much, it seems, has changed.

 

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