China's caged bears in long battle for freedom

By Gillian Murdoch

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Smuggled overseas from China's far-flung bear farms, bear bile eye drops and remedies can be bought at traditional Chinese medicine shops the world over.

The amber-brown elixir is difficult but not impossible to procure say TCM storekeepers in Singapore's downtown Chinatown, despite bear bile being banned outside China to protect the endangered Asiatic black bears whose gall bladders store it.

Stopping the trade that experts fear could drive endangered bears to extinction means stopping demand for the "liquid gold" so prized as a traditional cure that it has fetched prices higher than gold, ounce-for-ounce, experts say.

"We need to stop buying," said Grace Gabriel, Asia Regional Director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, (IFAW).

"If we don't buy, they don't die".

Even with a new state-approved "free drip" method of extracting bile, China's incarcerated bears lead miserable, pain-wracked lives, said campaigner Jill Robinson, who says she won't rest until the 7,000 bears kept on China's farms are free.

"(It's) undeniably cruel, undeniably wrong, from start to finish," said Robinson, head of Animals Asia, at her bear rescue centre in southwest Sichuan Province, the home of China's iconic panda, which draw hordes of tourists each year.

"I mean no one's going to die from lack of bear bile".