"What The Fuck, China?!" or "Bear Commits Murder/Suicide To Escape Torture"

[Seil]

So I was watching Two Best Friends playing Revengening, and Matt tells this story about the Chinese puncturing the stomachs of bears and letting them bleed out. I thought that was a little far-fetched. I thought that was a little too Bond villain. So I looked it up, and apparently China is "milking" bears for their bile, which is said to have a whole lot of health benefits. What the fuck, China?

*Note - feel free to look at the linked stories, where you'll see a lot of fucking depressed bears with tubes coming out of their stomachs.

In a secretly shot video, a Chinese farmer holds up a bag of yellowish bile he has just extracted from a caged bear.

"Some Westerners say this is cruel - but I think the bears are making a contribution to mankind," says the grinning man.

Animal welfare groups have recently stepped up their campaign to end the practice of milking bears for their bile, still legal in China.

They say the animals suffer enormous physical and psychological pain.

But bear bile has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for hundreds of years and it is not proving easy to change habits formed over generations.

Pharmaceutical companies that farm bears are also fighting back to protect their industry, in a public relations battle to win hearts and minds.

Bear bile is a digestive fluid produced in the liver and stored in the gall bladder.

It is valued in traditional Chinese medicine because it is supposed to fight fever, cleanse the liver and improve vision.

Made into a powder, it sells for at least 130 yuan ($21; £13) a gram

So apparently the Chinese are into this, but the bears sure aren't:

It has been reported that the mother and cub were being kept in tiny cages known as 'crush cages' which restricted their movement, on a farm in a remote part of North-West of China, according to website Asia One.

One witness told Reminbao.com that the mother bear broke out of its cage when it heard her cub in distress before a worker punctured its stomach to milk the bile.

The mother bear rushed to its cub and hugged it until it eventually strangled it before running head-first into a wall, killing itself.

According to Singapore Seen, the witness, who has not been named, said: 'When a worker wanted to open up her cub’s stomach, the mother bear broke open the cage and went after the cub.

'After failing to release the chained cub, she hugged the cub.

'Then, the mother bear killed the cub to save it from a life of hell.'

Bears can be farmed for their bile for around 20 years, before they stop producing it and are killed.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Not very surprising to read this, considering another one of their delicacies involves skinning a strapped down donkey, pouring boiling water on the flesh, then carving off said flesh while it is still alive. Hua Jia Lu is what it is called.

But bizarre as these may be every culture has their bizarre/bordering grotesque practices involving food/medicine/whatever involving animals and such. All part of the cultural cornucopia of this quirky creature called the human race. Does that justify some of the acts? In this case certainly not. Hell, in a lot of cases certainly not.

This particular one saddens me. I like bears.

Japan has Ikizuki, dojo tofu, among other things like dancing octopus or dancing fish flakes..forget what either are called.

France has ortolan, foie gras. I could go on, really.

[Sifright]

Another example is people that eat crabs. They get dropped alive into boiling water.

Edit: The crabs get dropped into the boiling water not the people...

[Seil]

I cannot argue that, it is a good point. Crustaceans lack the opportunity to escape their predicament. I will say, however, that there is still a discussion as to whether or not their nervous systems are developed enough to feel what we describe as pain, as well as the fact that it's relatively quick compared to the twenty years in the OP.

I am aware my outrage is hypocritical here.

[RobinStarwing]

Originally Posted by Seil

I cannot argue that, it is a good point. Crustaceans lack the opportunity to escape their predicament. I will say, however, that there is still a discussion as to whether or not their nervous systems are developed enough to feel what we describe as pain, as well as the fact that it's relatively quick compared to the twenty years in the OP.

I am aware my outrage is hypocritical here.

Actually, no it is not I feel.

Reason being is that Crabs are a part of the Food Chain and we eat them. I eat Lobster and Crab and Shrimp myself. I got no issues because to me, this is natural.

Bears though and for this? Yeah...this is wrong on so many levels that I can't even BEGIN to properly express my outrage at this. Suffice it to say I hope these bastards when they die are put in a VERY special level of Hell just for this...a freezing cold Hell with nothing to wear but a lion cloth over their groin while a tube is stuck into them to milk them of their bile for all eternity.

[Magus]

I thought everyone was aware of this. They put the bears in a little tiny cage they can't move in and milk their bile. It's been being done on an industrial scale since the 1980s, first in North Korea and now in China.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by RobinStarwing

Actually, no it is not I feel.

Reason being is that Crabs are a part of the Food Chain and we eat them. I eat Lobster and Crab and Shrimp myself. I got no issues because to me, this is natural.

Bears though and for this? Yeah...this is wrong on so many levels that I can't even BEGIN to properly express my outrage at this. Suffice it to say I hope these bastards when they die are put in a VERY special level of Hell just for this...a freezing cold Hell with nothing to wear but a lion cloth over their groin while a tube is stuck into them to milk them of their bile for all eternity.

This post is a mess of not understanding the "food chain" and an example of the completely arbitrary standards by which we set what animals are "okay" to eat and which aren't.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Kim

This post is a mess of not understanding the "food chain" and an example of the completely arbitrary standards by which we set what animals are "okay" to eat and which aren't.

Pretty much, what we eat is mostly arbitrary. Hell, crustaceans are actually one of the least likely animals for humans to traditionally eat because they spoil so rapidly.

Bear meat at least lasts a decent amount of time before it spoils.

Also Robin, people eat bears and pretty much everything else to that isn't directly poisonous and even then puffer fish get eaten to.

Excusing the treatment of crustaceans when they are cooked alive because you personally eat them is so incredibly ego-centric.

You are being a hypocrite basically.

Edit: I don't say this to insult you but to point out that you are applying your sense of ethics inconsistently.

[CABAL49]

Yeah, the US needs to look at the meat industry as a whole before they can condemn other countries.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

The problem here is that the bears aren't being used for food, they're being used for "traditional medicine," which essentially amounts to quackery. Once they're tapped out of bile, they're killed and discarded outright, even if the meat could have been used for food. Captive breeding is apparently rare and most "farms" are restocked from wild populations, many of which are endangered.

There is a massive difference between this and the Western food industry.