and clicking on the “Feed an Animal in Need” button. Every click
provides .6 bowls of food to the hungry. A click per day is all it takes to
make a difference. I’ve been visiting this site for the past five years, every
day, without fail.
One Saturday morning, I was cleaning out my e-mails and feeling
good about doing my part in the world—“feeding the animals in
need.” I happened to notice a picture listed by one of the site’s sponsors.
What I saw was an animal in a cage trying to eat its way through
the bars. It looked so sickly and gaunt that not even all that beautiful
fluffy fur could mask its pain. In fact, it looked so terribly tortured that I
couldn’t even make out what kindof animal it was! Was it a bear? A
raccoon? I honestly couldn’t tell.Truthfully, I didn’t want to look closer.
My fear told me that I would only be reminding myself how much pain
exists in the world and that there was very little I could do about it. Still,
I know better than to look the other way just so that I can feel better.
I felt this overwhelming need to tune in. I could hear the animal
calling to me, asking me to wake up and pay attention. As I looked
closer, to my horror I discovered that what I was seeing were captured
bears, held in their cages for tens of years on end.
The bears live in cages little bigger than themselves for ease
of “milking.” Bile is extracted through a cut made in the
bear’s abdomen and into the gallbladder, where bile is stored
after being secreted by the liver via the hepatic duct. A tube
is inserted into this opening to tap the bile, or a steel stick is
forced into the gallbladder with the bile then running
down it into a basin. Between 10 and 20 ml of bile is tapped
from each bear twice daily. The WSPA [World Society for
the Protection of Animals] reports that, during milking, in-
vestigators saw bears moaning, banging their heads against
their cages, and chewing their own paws.The mortality rate
is between 50 and 60 percent.When the bears stop produc-
ing bile after a few years, they are moved to another cage,
where they either are left to starve to death or are killed for
their paws and gallbladders. Bear paws are considered a del-
icacy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile_bear)The Evidence 105ccc_zero_077-112_evid.qxd 5/4/07 2:21 PM Page 105