I’ve been completely unaware of this…maybe I’ve been living under a rock? For those that do not know, the bile and gall bladder of bears are used in traditional Asian medicine, which are believed to have medicinal properties. This in effect causes approximately 12,000 bears to be raised in captivity, and the conditions they live in are horrible. Most of these bears live in cages about the size of a telephone booth positioned sideways…therefore, they cant even stand or turn around easily. To add on to this, they are forced into painful procedures to extract their bile.

Jackie Chan is passionate about animal advocacy and is actively doing something about this. It’s great to see that people such as Jackie are going outside of their normal boundaries and are doing something sincere and positive in the world. He has teamed up with the World Society for the Protection of animals (WSPA) to tackle this issue and have filmed a nice PSA for the end to this cruel practice.

A synthetic alternative has been in existence since the 1950s and other alternatives, such as herbal remedies and acupuncture, are deemed to be just as effective by experts. So is bear farming even necessary anymore?

Here’s the PSA by Jackie Chan and WSPA:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!