Malnourishment, unhygienic conditions, stress-induced behaviours, infected wounds and inhumane treatment have been documented at farming facilities across Asia ( Maas, 2000 Li, 2004 Loeffler et al., 2009 Kikuchi, 2012 Bando et al., 2019). ![]() According to official government records, the number of bears on farms in Vietnam reduced to 1,250 individuals in 2016 and again to 327 in August 2021 ( Education for Nature Vietnam, 2021).īear farms are associated with a plethora of animal welfare and conservation concerns. ![]() Although they were not as large as the commercial bear farms established across China, they still produced enough bile to supply a strong domestic demand ( Burgess et al., 2014 Wilcox et al., 2016). In the early 2000s, at the height of the Vietnamese bear farming industry, there were around 4,500 individual bears on farms throughout the country. Mass bear bile extraction facilities, known as bear bile ‘farms’ were introduced to Vietnam in the 1990s to meet a growing demand for traditional medicine products containing bear bile, thought to be fueled by a number of social factors, including rapid growth in urban prosperity ( Venkataraman, 2007 Drury, 2009 Crudge et al., 2018). In Vietnam, bile is extracted from living bears by sedating the bear and using ultrasonic equipment and long needle syringes to locate the gall bladder and drain the bile. ![]() Bile, a fluid stored in the gall bladder, is considered a particularly valuable ingredient because it contains the active pharmaceutical compound Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), which is recognised as effective treatment for liver disease ( Rubin et al., 1994 Li, 2004 Amaral et al., 2009 Wilcox et al., 2016). Bear gall bladders and bile are used as medicine for the treatment of many ailments, including fighting fever, combatting inflammation conditions, and reducing cholesterol ( Feng et al., 2009). The use of bear bile in traditional medicine is well documented in the literature ( Feng et al., 2009 Foley et al., 2011) and is commonplace in spatially distinct areas across Vietnam ( Nguyen, 2007 Drury, 2009 Drury, 2011 Ngoc and Wyatt, 2013 Wilcox et al., 2016 Crudge et al., 2018 Davis et al., 2019b Davis et al., 2021). We hope the results of this study can help refine strategies and inform future efforts to end the bear bile industry in Vietnam. Based on these findings, we suggest the most effective method of persuading bear farmers to stop trading bile would be via former bear farmers and to reduce the social acceptability of bile consumption throughout the country. Additional results indicate that many Vietnamese bear farmers may have a poor understanding of regulations governing the trade of bear parts and that most farmers do not intend to stop farming bears. Our findings confirm previous reports in the literature that there is still an active, illegal bear bile market in Vietnam, but that bear farming is becoming less profitable due to a reduction in demand for farmed products and the decreasing price of bile. ![]() Thirty-seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 active and 9 former bear farmers across 14 provinces in Vietnam. The aim of this study is to gain insight into the motivations and experiences of Vietnamese bear farmers. Extracting and selling bear bile has been prohibited in Vietnam since 2005, but there is evidence that an illegal industry remains active. Wildlife Programmes, World Animal Protection, London, United Kingdomīears were once farmed legally across Vietnam to supply bile, a digestive fluid, as an ingredient for traditional medicine products.Jennah Green *, Jan Schmidt-Burbach, Karanvir Kukreja and Elodie Guillon
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