Before getting together with the members of your conversation group to discuss the topic of wildlife in general and cruelty to animals in particular, go over the questions below on your own, so that ideas flow more easily in your talking session and you can deal with some vocabulary problems beforehand.
- Traditional medicine amounts to superstition and ignorance.
- Alternative medicine only works because of the placebo effect.
- Some alternative medicine can actually be harmful.
- Animal activists are right when they object to animals being used in cosmetics or health-related experiments.
- Zoos nowadays serve no useful purpose and should be banned.
- Hunting as a sport should be banned and practices like hunting holidays should be considered a crime.
- For poachers in third-world countries hunting is their only means of survival
- Practices like the massive seal hunt in Canada or whale hunt in Japan are necessary to keep a balance in the population of these animals and beneficial for humans.
- Animals bred for food should be kept in humane conditions and not on factory farms.
- Feeding animals an unnatural diet is another form of torture.
- The destruction of wildlife habitat through deforestation, farming, and urban development is irreversible.
- Pet owners should face prison sentences if they abandon their pets.
- In a civilized society there is no place for entertainment or traditions which involve cruelty to animals.
This if the transcript of the video.
Here in CHENGDU, China, it is said that a daily dose of dead centipede can cure lock jaw, seizes and convulsions. All sorts of traditional Chinese medicines, like centipede, are readily available at this wholesale market. These women are sterylising caterpillar fungus. It’s used as an aphrodisiac or to treat cancer, but some of the cures here are increasingly controversial, even in China, which has been relying on medicines like this for centuries. This is Jonah Cassel reporting with Andrew Jacobs for the New York Times.
This woman is trying to sell us the gall bladder of a bear. She wants $350 for it. It’s actually illegal to sell the whole gall bladder in China, but bear bile, extracted from the animals’ gall bladder, it’s legally found here. It’s commonly found in liquid and powder form, and used to treat liver diseases. It’s even being marketed as a hangover cure.
Now the industry is getting bigger, but on the other side I would say the public awareness about bear farming is, is getting much better.
Just a few miles down the road from the medicine market, Toby Zhang helps rehabilitate bears which have been rescued from the bile farms. This sanctuary, run by a Hong-Kong based organization called Animals Asia, is home to more than 150 animals, were once milked for their bile.
They are kept in a small cage, so they can’t move properly. They have … problems, bone problems, and most importantly they also have mental problems. They are so stressed, so frustrated. All this is very cruel to a bear, and that’s why we say, well, we want to end this industry.
Nicola Field, the bear and vet director of Animals Asia sanctuary, has been monitoring the effects of bear farming for seven years. Estimates show there are twenty thousand bears being farmed in China.
Some bears will never eliminate, for example, the extent of their stereotypic behaviour. We’ll reduce it with everything we can give them here in terms of the enclosure life and the enrichment, and the food and the stimulation that they receive from all these things and living with the other bears. I think there’s still things that will stay with them, I’m sure there’s still things that will stay with them in their memories.
The group is using tactics familiar to animal rights activists in other countries, tapping into social media and releasing undercover videos like this, which shows bears trap in small cages.
They take their gall bladder from the liver area and stretch it, and put it closer to the muscle, the abdomen muscle, so that the farmer can always insert a catheter into the gall bladder to collect the bear gall.
Although NGO has been around for nearly two decades. Its recent increase in public support shows a shift in attitudes towards animals’ rights in China. Celebrities, including basketball star Yao Ming and movie star Jacki Chan have spoken out against the practice.
No sunshine, no trees, no freedom, no relief.
The sanctuary invites people to see the bears in hope of influencing opinions.
For now the practice of bear farming is on the rise in China. It remains to be seen whether the surging concern for animals’ rights will have a larger impact on China’s powerful pharmaceutical industry.
