I'm going to cage you, cut open your gut, stick a tube in there, and leave it there for the rest of your life. Its going to hurt so much that you'll gnaw at your own flesh in order to overstimulate your pain nerves and deaden them. If you're lucky, you'll die in a few years. If you're unlucky, you'll live longer and extend the torment.
Did I mention that you're a bear?
=====From Yahoo News=============
Rescue Center Offers Hope for China's Bile Bears
Tue Dec 17, 4:44 AM ET
By Anil Ekmecic
LONGQIAO, China (Reuters) - When rescuers whisked away 17 Moon Bears from lucrative Chinese bile farms this week to a new refuge facility in their native southwest, some had wounds weeping bile and puss and needed life-saving surgery.
Three with inoperable tumors were put to sleep by the "Moon Bear Rescue Center" in Sichuan, ending lives spent in tiny cages with surgically implanted catheters milking bile from their gall bladders.
"Their condition was beyond belief," animal activist Jill Robinson told reporters visiting the center. "They have appalling physical and mental problems."
The Asiatic black bears, called Moon Bears for the golden crescent of fur ringing their chests, are captured in the wild or bred in farms for green bile used in traditional Chinese medicine.
It hurts so much when bile is extracted that some animals gnaw at their own flesh to relieve their pain.
More than 80 bears, rescued with the help of local officials since the center began operating in 2000, are now housed in the refuge built by the Hong Kong-registered Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) at Longqiao, in the suburbs of the Sichuan capital Chengdu. Robinson founded and now heads it.
After months of recovery, bears can be seen roaming around a grass enclosure, playing with toys designed to spark instinctive behavior suppressed in bile farms.
Bear bile farms began spreading in Asia in the 1980s after development of the new method of tapping bile with catheters. Chinese farmers, which had killed bears for their gall bladders for thousands of years, adopted the practice because bears produced more bile alive than dead.
The Chinese authorities, which at first endorsed bear farms as a way of protecting bear populations in the wild, has now begun to crack down on them but has yet to ban them.
The Asiatic black bear is recognized by the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) as an endangered species.
The Longqiao center opened after an agreement in 2000 between the AAF, the Sichuan forestry department and the state-endorsed China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) to rescue 500 bears from farms and work toward ending bear farming for good.
Despite small steps taken to save some of the bears, much work lay ahead, said Robinson.
"There are thousands and thousands of bears still remaining on farms in China, still suffering, still dying as we speak.
"But at least the first steps have been made. The Chinese government is recognizing there is a fundamental problem now with bear farming in this country," she said.
SLOW PROGRESS
Bear bile farms have proliferated across China, where people consume thousands of kilograms of the bitter liquid every year to treat ailments such as soaring temperatures and liver problems, rather than take herbal or synthetic substitutes.
Sichuan authorities have closed down 35 of the farms and issued no new licenses since 1994, the AAF said in a statement.
Asked if the government backed bile farming, CWCA Secretary General Chen Runshen said: "Although bear farming is still legal, the central government does not approve of any bear farms where bears lead inhumane existences or are in bad living conditions."
CITES specifically bans international trade in the Asiatic black bear, and Chen said the Chinese government disapproved of the export of moon bear bile, although the substance has been found in shampoo, medicinal tonics and wine sold internationally.
Chen said that the number of bear farms in China had fallen in recent years while the number of bears milked for their bile had not increased. He gave no figures.
