Don’t Buy It!!
Imagine being taken away from your mother when you’re a few months old… having an iron corset strapped around your stomach… being placed in a cage where, as your body grows, the metal bars start pressing hard against your body…
Twice a day someone comes, sticks a 4 inch needle into your stomach and drains out fluid. The pain is so intense that you gnaw on your hands, writhing in pain… clutching your stomach. No one explains anything, no one cares… and EVERYDAY FOR THE NEXT 25 YEARS – that is all you know.
Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it? Or one of those freak horror movies that make you squirm and shut your eyes tightly.
This really does happen in today’s world.
The sun bears or honey bears are subject to these tortures for their bile. Bear bile is still used in Chinese medicines that claim to cure mainly eye and liver ailments. Many people claim that the bear’s bile can cure all types of diseases from a small cut to digestive problems to even cancer. It is the active constituent found in bear bile, UrsoDeoxyCholic Acid (UDCA), that these arguments are based on.
I am no scientist, and these arguments might be true – but there are many alternatives. The first synthesized UDCA was made in 1954 in Japan.
UDCA is available in many pharmaceutical brand names including Actigall and Urso (US); Destolit, Urdox, Ursofalk, and Ursogal (UK); Ursotan (South Africa).
Likewise, there are also about 54 herbal alternatives including rhubarb and dandelion!
So why is there a necessity for such cruel treatment?? There are cheaper, more sanitary and healthier alternatives.
News released 3 days ago reported how a company in China, Guizhentang Pharmaceuticals Company, was applying to make their initial public offering (IPO). This is where the public will be able to buy stocks/shares in a company, providing them capital to expand. That is exactly what Guizhentang Pharmaceuticals Company plans are… to expand.
There are currently 400 bears in their bear farm, and they plan on increasing the number to 1200! Guizhentang Pharmaceuticals Company currently have the biggest bear farm in China. And after a few years, when these bears’ bodies stop producing bile, they will be killed for every part of their body imaginable: meat, fur, paws and their actual gall bladder. Bear paws will be on restaurants’ list of delicacies, selling at up to USD250!
In 2000, CNN estimated that there were more than 7,000 bears being kept on 200 farms in China. That is a lot of lives being kept in confined cages.
There are many active groups out there who have people devoting their lives to save these sun bears, including Animals Asia and Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Center. If you have the money, donate, if you have the time, volunteer. If we sit around feeling sorry for these bears but do nothing to help, not making the effort to try, it will not make a difference in the world.
Do take a look at the photos below… these bears don’t need to die to experience hell… Please never harm animals… never. Spread this post around and help create awareness just from your keyboard. Please help.
Tsem Rinpoche
Named the sun or honey bear because of the crescent shape on the chest and also because they have long tongues and like to lick on honey!
No, it’s not a horror movie.
This bear was caught wandering around a village….
An incision was made to open him up…
The bladder was found and emptied out…
The search for the gall bladder continues…
A slit was made into the stomach…
This bear was killed in the village because he was apparently killing and eating the villagers’ livestock…you can see that it’s all fruit in his stomach.
There is also a green plastic bag – our actions affect others. Next time you throw rubbish onto the ground, do think twice…
I guess this guy found what he was looking for… a bloody organ filled with fluid…
He opened up a living being for one organ… all for greed
This is another sun bear pinned down to the ground, you can see that his eyes are wide open while a group of people are trying to extract his bile
Dried gall bladder
An iron corset on a sun bear…
This is the bear bile that is extracted and sold all around the world. They sell them in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada… and many other places, but predominantly in those countries…
You don’t want to be caught in a place like this.
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If you have the money, donate, if you have the time, volunteer. If we sit around feeling sorry for these bears but do nothing to help, not making the effort to try, it will not make a difference in the world. – Tsem Rinpoche
We will do whatever that bring us happiness, and long life! We are not wrong, but to gain happiness and health by scarifying another being’s life or well being, that is wrong. Simple, how do we feel when our lives are interrupted and destroyed?
horrible horrible horrible sadness
Dear Rinpoche, I don’t know why won’t they feel ashamed for killing all these precious animals. If they keep on killing these precious animals, one day the animals will become extinct. They will never know the suffering of the animals unless they get treated like animals. I know that speaking in this way is rude but I have no other way to explain it.
This is so inhuman!!!! Shocking!!! So much pain and sufferings for these bears so that the company can make a huge profit!!! Heartless!!! We must create more awareness through social media so that more people may realize how these animals had to go through the nightmare and let’s help stopped this barbaric actions!
在我还很小时，母亲常买熊胆给我们吃，说什么可以清血消毒。现在才知道这动作是很错误的。当然我母亲是出之爱护我们的心，而且当时的保护动物意识不深，所以也不能怪她。只是现在的我会告诉其他人停止食用类似的补品。
So many animals harmed for what? A medicinal benefit? Bah! Eat a root! It is usually healthier. One is unable to get any form of benefit from harming others. Even if you get a temporary health benefit, the negative karma created will create more suffering in the future. Stop the murders of innocent bears!
This is so disgusting! I really can’t imagine myself being sliced alive, it’s so cruel. And after that, they just leave their carcasses revealed with all the blood and organs. It’s really a very cruel and horrible thing to do, people have collected so much negative karma. I hope people will stop buying the biles because it’s also a way to discourage teh killings.
Thank You for sharing Rinpoche.
Love, beatrix.
This is a horrific story – and i don’t know if i feel worse for the bears who are suffering or the humans who are imposing the suffering because of the karma they are creating. The bears may be living out their karma but the humans are creating their future karma which will be awful – perhaps the karma of being reborn as one of the bears having to live in such conditions and killed for something completely irrelevant. Thank you for highlighting this and if more and more people are aware of this hideous practice, i hope people will stop consuming bear bile and the demand will reduce. I will share this on facebook and hope people will continue to share it.
Read related posts here:
Can you kill your baby
http://blog.tsemtulku.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/animals-vegetarianism/can-you-kill-your-baby.html
I met Jill Robinson
http://blog.tsemtulku.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/animals-vegetarianism/i-met-jill-robinson.html
Poor bears. How can humans expect the bears not to harm us when we are the ones who have been killing them for decades? And it all happened just because of us, wanting their gall bladders and biles. What kind of medicine is that if we have to take away the lives of the animals just to make one medicine??
This is just so awful – how much excruciating pain humans will put another being through for the tiny benefit that they can get back. Worse yet is the fact that there are other supplements available in the world today that bring about the same benefits and cure – so this is entirely unnecessary.
It frightens me to think of the experimentation that even goes into this in the first place – how do people suddenly think and “discover” that bear bile would be beneficial? This would mean that thousands of bears must have been experimented on, chopped up and dissected and various parts “tried out” to gauge the effects on humans… how many bears’ lives must have been wasted in vain, for perhaps they didn’t find anything in experimenting upon them…. and more frightening to think that this kind of experimenting could still be going on now – more bears and more animals being chopped up to see “what they’re good for”. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
How does all this justify anything really? And is our health really so so so so so important that we would put thousands of other lives through this for the sake of ours? What makes one of our lives more important than the thousands of bears? And could you live with the fact that your life and ‘health’ has been made possible only by the death and pain of so many others? What kind of quality of life is that?!
Oh my goodness… such a horrible fate to be in… Poor bears, even after all the years being brought up to love our soft toys (which often in the form of a bear…) and still something so heartless like this can happen.
How disappointing to see people behaving like animals. Why do they believe in animals only? Because all they think of is satisfying their desire for money. It does not matter what desire it is, but if we make ourselves do harmful things to others just for the sake of money, then that is a clear indication that we let our desire overtake our logic sense.
These poor bears! i will never do this in my life and why do humans kill for good medicines and good taste, if one being has to die for it that is just sick !
How can people do this to bears around the world, what have they done to you? Nothing. People just take their lives for their own personal reasons. I really cannot take things like this happening all around the world anymore. It has to stop soon. Anyone can make a difference.
BE VEGETARIAN. Thats all it takes to help animals around the world. Thank you for sharing the pictures Rinpoche.
Hard to believe that human beings can be so cruel that for the sake for gaining wealth, they impose great pains onto animals.
Cannot imagine how lives can be like to be locked up in a cage perpetually for the next 25 years and to have body fluid to be drained out twice a day.
Businesses run on concept of profitability and supply vs demand formula. When there is no profit, lesser and lesser people will do them until there is eventually none.
Clearly, education plays an important role in this. The more people can recognise the cruelty of this action and the potential alternatives to bile, the faster this situation can improve.
This is really horrible and inhumane. There are so many herbs that can heal the body why resort to torturing another living being to do the same job??? The world needs to see this and stop such barbaric practices immediately!!!
太慘酷了!為了達到目地,不擇手段..這種行為太自私太令人法指!難到沒有其他的藥物能夠代替熊膽與熊汁嗎?沒有更好的方式來對待它們嗎?捫心自問–人類喜歡得到這樣的對待嗎?
己所不欲,勿施于其他眾生!!貪心與私心已經蒙閉了他們的眼睛與良心,多行不益必自斃!
This is ridiculously cruel! I really cant imagine how could these cold-blooded human beings could do such things to other beings like animals?! We, human, because of greed, these animals are forced to live the way we want and could die anytime without knowing. How unfair? Animals do have the right to live also!
It seems that IPO wants to expand rapidly by increasing 3x numbers of existing bears, which also means that the market requirements are also increasing..This is so scary…I hope certain legal actions can be enforced in China to stop such animal cruelty. Compassion should take over ignorance.
Ignorance is so deep that people can’t differentiate what is right and what is wrong anymore. Some people still think that torturing animals to feed selfish needs is normal and animals exist to serve that need. On the other hand to let go of lucrative business opportunity to make money even if it means being humane and kindness to other beings does not make business sense. Imagine IPO for a company that rear bears for their bile! This is cruelty and selfishness beyond words.
i felt faint, just looking at the pictures; i felt like crying – i cannot imagine how people could be so cruel! i dare not imagine the karmic retributions the perpetrators will face in future! Om Mani Peme Hung for the victims and perpetrators. We must really tell more others to stop buying the stuff!
Reading this made me realize that I need to know where my medicines come from. Knowing or not knowingly we may be supporting their actions which create harm and suffering. We would inadvertently have to bear some of the negative karma since the product was made for us consumers.
Life is really a nightmare that entails fear, stress, depression, hopelessness and sufferings to the weak and powerless. To these sufferers, like the sun bears and the honey bears, as the blog said, they can only squirm and shut their eyes tightly and pretend they are in a nightmare horror dream, but never be able to awaken in realty, except to experience through hell of tortures and intensed pains until the last drop of their bile has been extracted out, ” to provide cheaper, more sanitary and healtheir alternatives for the benefit of human beings and their extensived profits of greed”!! Worldwide powerful authorities and/or governmental control of countries’ laws which prohibited the legality of such trade under the appendix of the convention of international trade of endangered species of wild Fauna and flora(cities), should shut down such illegal business of bear farms, and severedly prosecute the illegal sales or purchases of these animal products in the market irrespective. As declared by Dr. Jill Robinson, Founder of Animals Asia Foundations, that even legal bear bile producers are circumventing domestic and international regulations by exporting internationally, should take drastic measure to close down such business to save the bears from ultimate extinction!! “Om mani padmi hum.”