Hard to bear.

I begin with a disclaimer.  I am typically not the weepy-sobby kind.  Sometimes I am, but usually it’s accompanied by a reasonably justifiable cause, such as a death in the family or a Wild Wing Factory flatliner.  But on the whole, I didn’t shed a single tear during Titanic, The Notebook, or Bambi (I’ll admit I had to suppress a few urges to barf out a sob during Schindler’s List…I am human!), and one time, I shamefully powered through a long, drawn-out story of anorexia from a close friend without being able to conjure up even a smidgen of moisture.  I tried, believe me.

I figured the fact that I was bawling in the middle of a grocery store, like a spoiled child refused a candied good, afforded itself a post on my blog.  Let’s start from the beginning.  It was a pretty sunny day, actually.  On this particular Saturday afternoon, I was spending some time with my mom, which usually involves a lot of sitting around and chit chatting about seemingly interesting and important – but really not too interesting or important – things, and maybe a Korean reality tv show or two if the supply of interesting topics depleted itself.  We were out grocery shopping at a local Grand Mart (guess we decided to change things up a bit) when the hoover dam decidedly collapsed.  It was a story that my mom was telling me, in an ironically casual tone, that really did me in.  Hear me out – the story is actually pretty sad.  Also, the following will include pretty graphic pictures and stomach-lurching narrative.

You have been warned.

 

This is the story of the moon bear.

In ancient Chinese medicine, bear bile (the digestive juices produced by the bear’s liver and stored in the gall bladder) is an extremely valuable and sought after commodity, as it has been long believed to cure certain liver and eye ailments in humans.  Consequently, profiteers have created secretive bear bile farms, in which thousands of captured Asian black bears (also known as “moon bears”) are placed inside what is known as “crush cages”. These cages are so small that the bears are unable to stand upright, to allow for less resistance and easier access to their abdomens. (Side note: There is a known torture method that was used at one point that involves placing someone inside a cramped space designed so that the person cannot stand upright, nor can they sit down or rest the body in any way. Essentially, the person is left mid-way between standing and sitting in a position so awkward and uncomfortable, for such a long period of time that the mental stress and fatigue eventually forces the person to succumb. Sounds familiar…?)

There the bears are left for 10-12 years or more (granted they last that long), until their bodies stop producing bile, at which point, they will then be slaughtered for their meat, fur, paws, and gall bladders. Until then, they endure the excruciating bile extraction procedure (without anesthesia to save the bastards a few pennies) that entails puncturing the bear’s abdomen to the gall bladder with an iron catheter, which will milk out about 10-20 mL of bile each time. As the bile regenerates in the body, they repeat this gruesome process several times a day, for as long as a whole decade. Unable to bear the torture, the bears frequently commit suicide by pounding their paws against their chest or stomach, ramming their heads into the cage walls, or chewing their paws to bleed to death. To offset this, they are placed in iron vests, to limit mobility and force protection from their powerful paws.

As if that wasn’t unbelievable enough…

This story leaked out from a person who was invited into one of these farms to fill in for someone for a few days. It’s an extraordinary story that I still have a hard time believing, hard time wanting to believe. During one of the extraction procedures on a baby cub (whose bile is apparently even more precious and expensive than adult bile), the anguished roars of the mother bear (kept within watching distance of the crying cub!) became more than that, as her rage surged through her a strength so great that the mother bear somehow pried open the cage bars, tore apart the iron vest, and ran to her baby cub. The startled farm staff could only watch from a distance as the mother bear struggled desperately to break apart the clamped metal cuff and chains that bound the baby cub. When that proved futile, it is said that the mother bear then sat down and gently hugged her baby, licked away its tears, and gave a great loud cry as she smothered her baby to death.  Then, after releasing her dead cub, she got up and hysterically rammed her head into the wall, falling dead.

 

The more I read up on this issue of bear bile farming, the more I learn that this is not new news.   People have been aware of this practice for quite some time, and many of those people have been fighting tooth and nail to get it outlawed.  Ironically, it jars me even more to know this – that there IS awareness, and there IS a battle going on right now to protect these bears.  Why is it that people have to fight so feverishly to rid this place of the things that are so clearly charred black?  How is it that people are not absolutely heartbroken by the outrageous suffering and bloodshed of the innocent?  And why is that heartbreak not enough?

These practices, and the large corporations that run these billion dollar farming industries are still currently alive and ongoing, not because they have never been challenged, and not because there is no opposing force that will wage a war against them, but because they have so much to fight back with.  Greed, corruption, money, politics, power.

Personally, I do not call myself one of those animal rights activists (let’s be honest, when we think of animal activist, don’t we think of those psycho fanatics that throw imitation blood all over their naked bodies and sprawl onto a pile of other “dead bodies”, next to a large poster board that reads in bold letters, “DEATH FOR SALE”??)

 (I no lie)

I have had my moments of passionate animal cruelty opposition, but on the whole, I have always felt that, as tragic as some cases of animal cruelty are, it does not rank first on my list of problems this world has to tackle.  There is greater darkness out there, in my opinion.

Yet, when I hear of things like this… of stories so outlandish and wild that you cannot help but be momentarily hushed of words, it isn’t just a matter of animal cruelty.  It becomes a matter of humanity.  How is that mother bear who was so drenched in angst and heartache for her baby that she defied all logical estimates of her own power any different from a human mother, placed in the middle of a war-torn, blood-soaked country where an innocent child, a son or daughter of a tortured mother, can be slaughtered for no other sin than the sin of being born into the wrong world?

In the grand scheme of things, as stated previously, none of this is new.  Atrocities occur every day, everywhere.  In the line of animal abuse: the brutal slaughtering of hundreds of dolphins every year in Japan (watch The Cove!!), the live skinning of raccoon dogs and other animals at fur farms in China, bull and cockfighting in Portugal and Spain, even the inhumane treatment of chicken and cattle in the American meat industry (Food, Inc.).   The list can go on, really.  The most tragic part of it all is that these things will not stop anytime soon.  Because for every voice that will cry for justice, there will be two more that will be silent.  And for every broken heart, there will be two more that is already hardened and unavailable but for their own affairs.

My prayer is that I will never add to that number of hardened hearts, even if it means having to be a ridiculous hot mess in the middle of Grand Mart.

 

Please care.  That’s all it takes.

 

A Teary Mother Bear Killed Her Baby and Committed Suicide – A Heart Breaking True Story
The ultimate sacrifice: Mother bear kills her cub and then herself to save her from a life of torture
Alternative Health and Chinese Bile Bears
Snopes: The Right to Bear Farms?
******End Bear Farming*******