|
COPYRIGHT 2005 South Florida Sun-Sentinal
Byline: David Fleshler
CHENGDU, China _ The aging black bear climbed off her bunk and lumbered over to Jill Robinson, an activist who has dedicated herself to saving the bears of China.
"Hello, Franzi," Robinson cooed in a soft British accent, as the bear nibbled cranberries from her hand. "What a good girl you are."
Franzi's pleasant routine of cranberries, caresses and outdoor ramblings follows a life of suffering on a farm that produces ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Held for 25 years in a cage that kept her virtually immobile, Franzi lived with a painful hole drilled and redrilled into her abdomen so her gallbladder could be drained of bile.
An ancient Chinese remedy for rashes, fevers and other health problems, bear bile appears on the shelves of medicine shops throughout East Asia, as well as in Asian communities overseas. To produce the bile, thousands of Asiatic black bears are caged on farms in China, Vietnam, Burma and North and South Korea, according to Animals Asia, the World Society for the Protection of Animals and other animal-welfare groups.
Many bears have catheters permanently implanted in their abdomens. Some are trussed in metal corsets to prevent them from removing the painful needle.
Horrified upon visiting a Chinese bile farm in 1993, Robinson founded Animals Asia (www.animalsasia.org), which is rescuing bears and pressuring the government to shut down the farms by the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The group operates a sanctuary on the outskirts of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, which provides a home for more than 150 bears purchased from bile farms.
Through skillful...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
