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Bear Farming - An Important
Approach to Satisfy Human Beings’ Medical Requirements and Safeguard Wild
Population of Bears
Shaorong Zhu
Senior Pharmacist and Deputy Director, Deer Farm of Sichuan Provincial Chinese
Medicinal Material Company (DFC)
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The deer farm is established in 1962, the purpose is to raise and breed
medicinal animals to provide enough animal medicinal materials for medicine
producing enterprises. The initial principle of the deer farm’s establishment
is combine and balance protection and utilization of animals resource which are
of medicinal significance.
Bear farming is promising program with plenty of experiences on wildlife
taming, captive-breeding and human medical technology. In the past, we use
surgical transplant techniques to implant a tube inside bear’s body, although
the bear treat surgical part carefully by their own, it is still a eyewinker. In
addition to concerning research program of bile milking projects, we started to
study "non-tube bile collecting techniques" to make bear farming
causes more reasonable and more scientific. The so-called non-tube bile
collecting is to say afterward bear bile collecting will not take the use of
tube or other similar eyewinkers. Actually, it should be regarded as a great
progress in the area of bear surgical operations. At present, success rate of
surgical operation in the deer farm have reached up to 100%, the operation does
not foreclose the movement of bears, bear may mate naturally and become pregnant
and even successful bred cubs. After above mentioned operation, when staff
collect bile, they just take the use of one simple and special collecting
device. In summary, the advantages of non-tube bile collecting techniques are as
follows: firstly, there is no eyewinker inside bear’s body, no foreign body to
cause inflammation and no secretion, and the quality of the bile have hence been
up-graded. Secondly, the operation is really healthy, it doesn’t limit
capability of bear’s moving and other natural behaviors. Even if, the
inspection is not very careful, common people would not able to identify whether
or not the bears have been operated.
To better suit our farm to the basic principle of combination of wildlife
conservation and utilization, in 1994, the deer farm re-construct original
captive facilities in a large scale, the former State Traditional Chinese
Medicine Administrative Bureau participated and supported such a process. The
bureau not only allocated 350 thousands RMB yuan, but also list the deer farm as
bear bile producing base officially. Bear den become more comfortable compare
with previous small iron cages, the structure of the new bear den is composed
with three large iron cages with connection one large moving ground, and other
two bear reproduction room are provided. The new style of bear den have some
advantages, bear can reach the food in cages and it will easy staff of the deer
farm to collect bear gall bile when bear eating. If it is the season of
reproduction, pregnant bear would have their own private space. The moving
ground served as buffer area to peace the emotional fluctuation caused by
enclosure and estrous, and it will increase possibilities of bear’s
reproduction in captivity.
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Basic facts in the deer farm |
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YEAR |
Pregnant "Producing" Bears |
Number of Cubs |
Survived Cubs |
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1997 |
6 |
6 |
4 |
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1998 |
7 |
7 |
6 |
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TOTAL |
13 |
13 |
10 |
Although the number of above table is very small, apparently, it is not of
statistics significance to determine any sort of tendency, and there will not
any very detailed results can be inferred. The basic facts is that if only we
pay attention to improve producing bear’s living condition, we will definitely
deducing negative impact to the healthy of bears caused by bile collecting, we
can promise the normal behavior of bears and even have them participated
reproduction successfully. In the other profile, bear farming and bile
collecting from live bears, such a controversial issue which have been used by
some extremely NGOs attacked Chinese Government. The problem of maltreat is
coming to be resolved step by step with direction from Chinese Government, it is
just like all other problems created by some newly developed cause. To achieve
no-maltreat bile collecting, at the same time of satisfying the human’s
medical and healthy protection’s requirements to ensure the safety of bear’s
wild population are our ultimate goals. It is believed, through concert efforts
from both governmental agencies and our farm, to be actualized in near future.
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