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DPA
Hanoi
Nine bears that were held in cages at an illegal bile farm in southern Vietnam for around a decade have been handed over to a sanctuary, a conservationist behind the rescue told dpa on Tuesday.
The bears left the farm near Ho Chi Minh City Monday by truck on their nearly 2,000 kilometre trip to the sanctuary in northern Vietnam's Vinh Phuc province, said~Tuan Bendixsen, country director of the wildlife protection NGO Animals Asia.
"This is one of the few farms that voluntarily gave up their bears, which means the work we've been doing in terms of closing down the bear bile farm industries is working very well," said Bendixsen.
Bear bile is used in traditional Vietnamese and Chinese medicine to treat liver and gallbladder conditions, although a synthetic version of the active ingredient is commercially available at pharmacies worldwide.~
Critics of the trade say it is extremely cruel to the bears that are usually captured from the wild.
"The bears are kept in small cages, they're not being looked after properly, and they suffer from regular bile extraction," said Bendixsen.
While Vietnam abolished the trade in 2005, around 1,200 black bears are kept on farms in the country, according to Animals Asia.~
Bile remains readily available to Vietnamese customers, with online vendors selling it for around 3.5 dollars per cubic centimetre.
