Chengdu stores ban bear bile

Veterinarians and nurses from Animals Asia Foundation perform a health check on an Asian black bear at the Sichuan Longqiao Moon Bear Sanctuary in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on April 27, 2010. Bears suffer various illnesses after their bile is extracted. More efforts are being made to prohibit selling bear bile products. [Photo by Zhang Yushu for China Daily]

Around 150 Chinese drugstores in Chengdu announced on Thursday that they would stop selling products containing bear bile powder, giving a boost to animal rights activists in China's long-running debate over the extraction of bile from live bears.

Over 100 drugstores in Shenyang, Zhuhai and other cities made the same pledge in 2012.

More than 260 drugstores have openly opposed the sale of the product, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat fever and conditions of the liver, heart, circulation and eyes, according to Zhong Yuanwei, a manager with Dahua Pharmacy company in Chengdu.

He said his company has not sold the products since 2010 when a video circulated on the Chinese Sina Weibo micro blog site revealing the method by which bear bile is extracted from Asiatic black bears, prompting concerns among animal rights activists and animal lovers.

The method involves inserting a tube into the bear's gall bladder and extracting the bile while the animal is alive. Bears are kept in small cages for periods of 10 years of more so that large amounts of bile can be extracted.

Zhong said that healing human diseases should be possible without cruelty to animals.

In order to further boycott the bear bile industry, Zhong's company has formed an alliance with other pharmacy chain stores, all of which prohibit the sale of bear bile products.

"After we got to know the industry, we found that there is a shared sympathy for the bears, and most of the customers agree too,"Zhong said.

Zhong said that he is contributing to the progress of animal welfare in the country, which depends on raising awareness of the issues.

He said the company has suffered some loss in business but not much. He said that he has not received any form of subsidy or compensation from the government or any other organization.

According to Zhong, very few customers come to stores asking for bear bile products these days. When someone asks for such products, his sales assistants explain the reason why they stopped selling it, and most customers seem to understand.

"There are five or six different medicines of this kind, but they can all be replaced with others,"he said, giving the example of bear bile eyedrops, which can be replaced with a product made from pearl powder.