A spokesman for the forestry administration yesterday defended
the country's efforts to improve the welfare of wild animals in
response to what he said were unfair foreign media reports.
Cao Qingyao, a spokesman for the State Forestry Administration
(SFA), said the country has taken effective measures to better
regulate the raising of wild animals and made obvious achievements
in protecting them.
"There have been huge improvements in wild animal welfare in
China," he told a press conference yesterday.
He was speaking in response to reports by some foreign media
that said it is "inhumane" to extract bile from the gallbladders of
farmed bears.
Calling the reports "unfair and incomplete", Cao said they
failed to give a full picture of the country's efforts to improve
animal welfare.
He said the artificial cultivation of wildlife had played an
important role in wildlife conservation.
Wildlife welfare
And, as the government body in charge of wildlife conservation,
the SFA has taken a series of measures to improve captive wildlife
welfare, he said.
For example, standards had been introduced to improve such
things as sanitation and feeding at wildlife cultivation centers,
Cao said.
In addition, 16 wildlife first-aid stations have been
established and more than 300 medical centers have been set up by
local people to care for sick and injured animals and help them
return to the wild.
Previously tolerated, the feeding of small animals to predators
in zoos has been banned, Cao said, while circus operators have been
given strict guidelines on the treatment of animals.
The SFA has also cracked down on the illegal trade in cultivated
wildlife, especially monkeys bred for use in experiments.
At the end of 2005, just 23 laboratories nationwide were
licensed to trade in monkeys and these had to pass an annual
examination, Cao said.
Chinese scientists began experimenting with the extraction of
bile from farmed bears in the mid-1980s as a way to stop the
endangered animals being hunted for it.
The bile is considered an essential ingredient in traditional
Chinese medicine by its proponents and its efficacy is unmatched by
any substitute, they say.
Early bile-extraction technology involved implanting metal or
plastic tubes into the bears, which caused them tremendous
pain.
However, since the enactment of the Wildlife Protection Law in
1988, improved methods have been adopted, such as the use of tubes
made of bear tissue, to make the process painless.
"Although the technology of extracting bile from live bears has
been improved, it is still hard to say how much impact it has on
their health," an animal expert who asked not to be named, told
China Daily.
(China Daily September 13, 2007)