This must stop ! Animal torture in laboratories worldwide,: 9 graphic photos taken by a lab worker in two UK testing plants ( not suitable for children )

 

By TOM KELLY, INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR  https://www.dailymail.com/news/article

Fingers pinching its mouth open as a tube is pushed down its throat, this disturbing image shows how monkeys are sacrificed to check the safety of new weight-loss drugs. 

The unprecedented footage supplied to The Mail on Sunday was secretly filmed by a lab worker at two UK testing plants who said he was horrified the 'immense distress' the animals endured.

Restrained long-tailed macaques have new anti-obesity medication fed into their stomach to help assess if it is fit for human use.

Beagles, pigs, rabbits and other species also underwent 'extreme suffering' during trials for other new drugs before they can be sold in high street chemists, the worker said.

This includes not only potential treatments for serious diseases but many new products of everyday medicines such as headache tablets, cholesterol drugs, reflux medications, antihistamines, antibiotics and antidepressants.

All the animals that survive the tests are killed at the end of the process and their bodies dissected for further studies.

The UK testing facilities he worked at are contracted by major pharmaceutical companies to conduct required safety tests using animals before they can progress to human clinical trials.

Both sites are Home Office regulated and operating completely within the law.

The unprecedented footage supplied to The Mail on Sunday was secretly filmed by a lab worker at two UK testing plants. Pictured: A monkey being restrained ahead of tests

The tests are carried out to determine safety margins for use of the drug, how compounds move around the body and what affect this has on organs

Masks are strapped to the faces of beagles and monkeys and the trial substance inhaled by the animals. For these tests, monkeys are prepared by being restrained in vices around their necks and waists

ut the former lab worker said he wanted the footage and details of what happened to be released to ensure an informed public debate on the use of animal testing.

He described being 'haunted' by the shrieks and whimpers of animals during the trials, which could last for up to two years.

'My conscience wouldn't let me just quit and walk away,' he said. 

'I felt if I was able to provide a window into this world that had been hidden from public view, perhaps it would change.'

Campaigners immediately called for the Government to 'accelerate' its pledge to phase out tests using animals, branding the footage 'shocking.' 

But an animal testing advocacy group said 'extreme suffering' was extremely rare and the trials remained vital for producing life-saving medication and ensuring drugs were safe for human use.

The tests are carried out to determine safety margins for use of the drug, how compounds move around the body and what affect this has on organs.

The most common, called 'oral gavage' involves a rubber tube pushed down the throats of restrained animals into their stomachs to have the substance fed directly into their body.

This method is used for long-tailed macaques to test medication for liver diseases and weight-loss drugs and beagles for anti-inflammation drugs.

In other tests, masks are strapped to the faces of beagles and monkeys and the trial substance inhaled by the animals.

For these tests, monkeys are prepared by being restrained in vices around their necks and waists.

Both methods were also used to test psychoactive and psychedelic compounds on beagles, including cannabis extracts and an ingredient found in ecstasy, as part of research into potential drugs to treat psychiatric and behavioural disorders, the former lab worker said.

Mini pigs are used to test medication for ulcers and skin infections by using treatments where eight cuts are taken from the back of the struggling animal and a gel applied daily, the lab worker said.

Mini pigs are used to test medication for ulcers and skin infections by using treatments where eight cuts are taken from the back of the struggling animalF 

In other tests, masks are strapped to the faces of beagles and monkeys and the trial substance inhaled by the animals

Pregnant rabbits are used to the test the effect of a new drug on the survival and development of an embryo

Pregnant rabbits are used to the test the effect of a new drug on the survival and development of an embryo.

There are also intravenous tests, where the animals are restrained and the test compound is injected directly into their blood stream, either as a single injection or infusion over a period of time.

The former lab worker who filmed the tests said: 'I had no idea what toxicity testing regulations required until I applied for a job at the facility, and I quickly realized that no one, except those who work there, do.

'I wouldn't have taken the risks I did [to secretly film] if I hadn't believed that the sole reason this continued was because the public didn't know.'

He said he and his colleagues cared about animals but their jobs required them to 'facilitate their suffering'.

'The mantra that comes with the job is that you are doing something positive for the world.

'There were even signs on the walls to remind us – but it didn't take me long to stop 'drinking the Kool-Aid' and start thinking, 'how could anything positive come from this?'

'Procedures that the public would find shocking had been normalized as part of regulatory testing. 

'Everyone I worked with cared about the animals but there was little we could do to ease their suffering.

'I found it almost unbearable at times to know that I was contributing to it.'

Lab workers sometimes played music to try to distract themselves but it was impossible to ignore the animals distress and 'intense suffering,' he said. 

'The primates would struggle, cry out and scream to avoid the tube from being forced into their mouths.

'I'll never forget the loud squealing of mini pigs as they were subjected to various procedures.

He said when it was time to kill the animals at the end of the trial the workers were 'devastated.'

'Part of you knew that it meant an end to their suffering, but it still felt like a final violation.'

His intervention comes after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agency announced last month guidance to help drug developers create alternatives to animal testing to trial new products. 

The American regulator said it wants a shift to 'human-centric models' which it said can 'more reliably, efficiently and ethically predict human drug reactions prior to clinical trials'.

Last year the FDA claimed: 'There is growing scientific recognition that animals do not provide adequate models of human health and disease.

'Over 90 per cent of drugs that appear safe and effective in animals do not go on to receive FDA approval in humans predominantly due to safety and or efficacy issues.'

It said animal-based data have been particularly poor predictors of drug success for multiple common diseases including cancer, Alzheimer's and inflammatory diseases. Some medications which are generally recognized safe in humans, such as aspirin, may have never passed animal testing, it said.

'Conversely, some compounds which have appeared safe in animal models have been lethal in human trials.'

The FDA announced plans to develop replacements to animal testing that would include computer modelling and artificial intelligence to predict a drug's behaviour and lab-grown human 'organoids' and 'organ-on-a-chip' systems – both advanced models that can mimic human liver, heart, and immune organs to test drug safety.

But pro-testing advocacy groups said the figure cited by the FDA was a complete 'misconception' likely to be removed in time and said clinical trials showed that animal data is usually the same as human data 90 per cent of the time.

Chris Magee from Understanding Animal Research said 'extreme suffering' for animals in such tests was very rare and the footage obtained by the lab worker sounded like it highlighted the 'rarest and most severe experiments required or permitted by law.'

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agency announced last month guidance to help drug developers create alternatives to animal testing to trial new products. Pictured: A monkey being restrained ahead of tests

Campaigners immediately called for the Government to 'accelerate' its pledge to phase out tests using animals, branding the footage 'shocking'

Chris Magee from Understanding Animal Research said 'extreme suffering' for animals in such tests was very rare and the footage obtained by the lab worker sounded like it highlighted the 'rarest and most severe experiments required or permitted by law'

He said: 'It is already illegal to use an animal in research if a non-animal alternative is available. 

'Dogs and primates are the least used animals and cannot be used if another species can be used in their place.'

Routine animal testing was introduced in the UK in 1968 following instances of medicines, including thalidomide, that had not been fully tested in animals causing harm to humans, he said.

In law, testing on primates can only be used 'for the purpose of the avoidance, prevention, diagnosis or treatment of debilitating or potentially life-threatening clinical conditions in man,' he added.

Any test likely to cause pain, suffering or distress to the animal must be performed with anaesthesia or painkillers, unless that would defeat the purpose of the experiment, he said.

Mr Magee said that while there has been a 43 per cent reduction in animals used for regulatory testing in the past decade, it would not be possible to stop all animal testing for many years to come.

This is because alternatives like cell cultures or 'organs-on-chips' cannot yet replicate the complexity of a full organism.

Animal testing is not just about identifying toxicity but understanding how substances behave in a whole living system, he said.

This includes how drugs are absorbed, distributed and metabolised and how they may change – potentially into something dangerous – as they move to different parts of the body.

The tests also determine how the drugs may impact and potentially harm the environment after they are excreted.

He also stressed that many of those drugs sold in chemists – such as cancer treatment andstatins – are life saving.

Euthanising animals after such tests was necessary as post-mortem examinations were the only way to detect thecauses and development of diseases, he said.

Labour pledged to phase out animal testing in its General Election manifesto but last year Science Minister Lord Vallance said that stopping all animal testing was 'not possible anytime soon'.

Lyn White, director of Animals International, who was approached by the lab worker to help highlight the issue, said: 'What this evidence shows is not just isolated procedures but animals enduring weeks and sometimes months of repeated dosing, restraint and confinement.

'Their suffering and distress are not momentary – it is prolonged and cumulative.

'These animal tests, despite being conducted in the name of public safety, have been hidden from public view.

'Without transparency, the public has never had the chance to voice whether this suffering should continue.'

Labour MP Irene Campbell, chairman the of All-Party Parliamentary Group on Phasing Out Animal Experiments in Medical Research, said: 'The terrible suffering experienced by these animals and shown in this exposé underlines the need for bold and immediate action to accelerate the phase-out of animal experiments.

'These must be replaced by the innovative, human-specific methods that offer the best chance of progress for patients.'

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After the Chernobyl disaster 26th April 1986, 40 years ago, the abandoned exclusion zone has seen a remarkable recovery of local wildlife :what happened to the many dogs?

  

In the decades since the Chernobyl disaster, the abandoned exclusion zone has seen a remarkable recovery of local megafauna. Herds of grazing ungulates and the large predators that feed on them have repopulated the landscape in the total absence of human beings, along with countless small animals.

Telling the story of Chernobyl in numbers 40 years later involves dauntingly large figures and others that are even more vexing because they’re still unknown. A look at numbers that hint at the scope of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986:

On April 26, 1986, a routine safety check gone wrong led to one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. While the Ukrainian people mourned the loss of human life and the necessary abandonment of their homes, the earth mourned the loss of over 600 hectares of pine trees and the destruction of an entire ecosystem. The only living things that remained were the animals left behind. The forgotten ones, the abandoned ones, the ones who now had to learn how to survive in a nuclear wasteland. The wild dogs of Chernobyl.

When the canine population grew to a point that was uncontrollable, something had to be done—humanely. The solution was an animal-first project that involved mass sterilization of the dogs living on the site carried out by the Dogs of Chernobyl program, part of the Clean Futures Fund (CFF).

Forced exclusion by the thousands

In the aftermath of the nuclear disaster, the surrounding 30-kilometer area now known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone saw the evacuation of around 300,000 including the entire population of the nearby worker town of Pripyat. Those who didn’t evacuate, though, were the dogs. To dog owners, fleeing your hometown without your beloved four-legged friends may seem unthinkable, but the panic that followed the explosion, alongside authorities’ instructions to leave everything behind, including pets, meant that many furry friends became homeless and familyless overnight.

With no vets, families, or even people left in the exclusion zone, the dogs of Chernobyl were left to fend for themselves, all while radioactive matter from the explosion seeped into their bones. The radioactivity can cause major health issues, and fear of animal-human contamination also prevents the dogs from being released into society.

Fast-forward to 2017 and there were an estimated 1,000 stray dogs living throughout the exclusion zone. Somehow, despite countless hardships and grueling living conditions, these dogs survived, reproduced, and continued to live on the abandoned site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The sheer number of dogs was becoming a problem, and efforts by Soviet authorities to cull the dogs were far from well-received by the Ukrainian population. Workers at the plant—who are now working on the decommissioning process—had taken an interest in building shelters and feeding the dogs and wanted to enlist help to care for them as breeding spiraled out of control. That’s where Erik Kambarian and Lucas Hixson came in. The two met in 2015 on visitor trips to the power plant with a group of professionals with backgrounds in nuclear energy and emergency response, and quickly saw the need for some sort of intervention to help both the humans and the animals affected by the disaster.

Building the program

In 2016, Kambarian and Hixson established the Clean Futures Fund (CFF)—an organization that provides support to communities affected by industrial accidents—and subsequently launched human and animal healthcare programs in 2017, including the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative. Portland-based Jennifer Betz, Veterinary Medical Director and Board Member at the program, explains that the initial goal of the project was to “do some sort of spay-neuter program and just keep them from reproducing, but allow them to live as happy as they possibly can.” Betz was contacted by the founders to join the program as she’d worked with organisations worldwide on similar projects: “We go into areas where they can’t afford veterinary care or there isn’t veterinary care, like Chernobyl, and we provide free spaying and neutering to help control the population, veterinary care, vaccinations, deworming, and wellness care.”

The first project was launched in 2017 when the CFF team and volunteers flew from the US to Ukraine to start the spay and neuter program. Despite the fearful nature of the dogs, Betz and her team were able to capture and treat 300 dogs during the first mission. Why not more? These dogs aren’t like your childhood pup—they’re feral. “They are not aggressive, but they’re very fearful,” Betz explains. “You can get close to them, but a lot of times you can’t touch them. So capturing them is very difficult.” During each mission on the site, a lot of time is spent building a trust that will enable the CFF team to provide medical care and help the dogs understand that these are good people.

Projects like these don’t come cheap, and while the travel expenses for the trip are covered by each individual volunteer, the organization still forks out around $20,000 per Chernobyl mission in order to bring all the supplies they need, and provide food, transportation, and accommodation on the ground. However, some crucial equipment was kindly donated by SPCA International, a huge help for the Dogs of Chernobyl project. “They had purchased all of our surgical instruments, surgery tables, and drapes,” Betz recalls.

Successes, but unexpected roadblocks

After effective programs in 2017, 2018, and 2019, the Dogs of Chernobyl team had successfully sterilized between 85-90% of the dog population, Betz explains. And then, the unthinkable happened: a pandemic and global lockdown, halting international travel and thus, temporarily suspending the organization’s spay-neuter project. During this time and without the presence of the CFF team, the non-sterilized dogs reproduced and new litters of pups were born. The new dogs came from, Betz suspected, a particular pack living on the site that was even more fearful than the others. “When you would try to catch them, they would take off and go into areas that you can’t access, like under fences. This population of dogs has been a problem for us ever since 2017,” Betz says. It wasn’t until the 2022 mission that Betz and her team were able to resume their on-site work.

Working with the dogs of Chernobyl is a physically demanding job. From setting up surgical clinics to building shelters, installing automatic feeders, and training feral dogs, this type of work isn’t for everyone. But Betz and her team are determined to help these dogs. Even with the many obstacles they’ve faced, this project is one close to their hearts: “Yes, Covid stopped us for a little while, but we’re here. We’re here to help,” she says.

A seemingly simple solution would of course be to screen the dogs for contamination risk, and then let them be adopted into warm, loving homes. But Betz explains that the process is harder and riskier than you might think. In an initial trip to the exclusion zone, the CFF team found an abandoned litter of puppies, and then a second litter after that. With about 34 small, vulnerable dogs on their hands, the team went through a taxing process to get the puppies off the site. “We had to get special permission from the exclusion zone, from the power plant, from all of the authorities—about 100 signatures to allow us to remove these dogs from the zone because you cannot legally remove anything from the exclusion zone due to radioactive contaminants,” Betz says. “So we petitioned them and said we will take care of them, vaccinate them, monitor them, and house them as long as we can to determine that there isn’t anything that’s coming out in their feces—which takes about three months—to assure that they were not going to pose a threat to the humans.” Add to that a six-month quarantine and about $4,000 to get the pups into the US or Canada and the whole process is expensive, exhausting, and—especially—it can be traumatizing for the dog.

So while 34 radioactive dogs were successfully adopted, the organization decided “they would act as ambassadors of our program so we could follow them and continue to see how they’re doing, find out if they’re developing any cancers later on in life,” Betz says. Their goal isn’t to disrupt the dogs’ lives by removing them from their home, but “to make them as comfortable as they possibly can be where they live. Yes, I’d love for all of them to have a great home, but their home isn’t so bad where they are.”

Sterilized dogs with temporary ink marks to ensure they don’t get rcaught by the CFF team. Photo credit: CFF

Working on radioactive grounds

While the radiation levels on the Chernobyl site were deemed safe for workers in recent years, the dugouts and trenches created during the Russian invasion of the site in March 2022 have potentially released new masses of radioactive matter previously buried in the soil. A research project currently being carried out by Greenpeace Germany, with the approval of the Ukrainian government and in cooperation with scientists from the State Agency of Ukraine on the Exclusion Zone Management (SAUEZM) to determine the current levels of radioactivity in the area.

Working on a radioactive wasteland comes with droves of precautionary measures and stringent safety procedures. Betz explains that a typical day starts out with radiation control: “They do a whole body count of you and take measurements to see what you have as far as radiation contaminants. And then we are issued dosimeters that we are to wear for basically 24 hours.” In terms of clothing, anyone who enters the site has to be fully covered in protective gear. “When we’re there we have to wear long sleeves, special long coats, special long pants, and special boots that stay in the area,” Betz says. After a long day of treating and feeding the dogs, the team “turn in our dosimeters and then go back to radiation control our whole body, count our measurements and everything once more.”

The impact of the war

When Betz and the team planned to perform a “scouting mission” in May of this year, their goal was to figure out how to catch the uncatchable dogs. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February put an abrupt halt to the organization’s campaign. With the Russian Armed Forces controlling the Chernobyl exclusion zone, the dogs were left without the food and care they had come to know from the workers at the plant. While some workers managed to occasionally sneak out and feed the pups, many of the dogs were starving to death.

Once the Ukrainians regained control of the exclusion zone and power plant site, the workers on the ground were able to go back out to the dogs and feed them. While recovering health and strength is a huge positive, Betz says this also created problems: “These dogs were fattened back up and got healthy and then started breeding,” and with breeding come puppies, and with puppies come risks. Betz says she knew she and her team had to do something: “We were going to have a bunch of new litters before winter. They were going to freeze to death. They were going to suffer.”

Betz and the Dogs of Chernobyl team assembled a small group of volunteers and took a risk: they were to sneak into Ukraine in the middle of a war and resume their efforts to help the dogs. In June 2022, after a flight from the US and a train from Poland, along with permission from Ukrainian authorities to enter the Chernobyl site, Betz and her crew set out on a five-month mission to spay and neuter the remaining, until now uncatchable dogs. Instead of embarking with a big group of volunteers, Betz says the strategy this time was different, “We only took specialized people that we’ve had in the past. We only brought basically six people and then [we worked with] the Ukrainians.”

Among the medical supplies, food, and outdoor sleeping equipment (because hotels weren’t an option this time around) the team also brought care packages for the Ukrainian soldiers they met along the way to the site. “Each one of us brought little goodie bags that we made, with little things for the military at the checkpoints. They had socks and hand warmers, beef jerky, and things for them to have. Those were purchased by the volunteers themselves,” Betz explains. The CFF organization as a whole has been supporting the Ukrainian population since the invasion began: “We’ve provided over $100,000 since the beginning of the war in assistance to the people of Ukraine,” Betz says.

The power of social media

The Dogs of Chernobyl project has gained a lot of traction on social media, particularly trough Tik Tok, where the CFF team shares videos of the dogs on the site to raise awareness of their efforts. Betz explains that a lot of what they do on social media is educational, especially for the younger generations. “There’s a lot of people that don’t know [what happened]. Younger people weren’t around in 1986, so they don’t know anything about Chernobyl so we try to educate as best we can.”

The organization’s presence online has also led to a lot of adoption requests. Unfortunately, it can’t be done. Betz says people all over the world want a Chernobyl puppy, “I get 10 or 15 emails a day asking ‘can I adopt a dog?’” But she encourages people to instead adopt locally and “go next door to your shelter,” as there are plenty of dogs that need homes without traveling across the world.

Because of the sensitive situation of the organization’s most recent mission, social media campaigns for funding were halted. Betz explains how broadcasting that a group of Americans would be traveling to Chernobyl in the middle of a war wouldn’t have been safe. However, this affected the number of donations they were able to collect for this mission. “We usually get a lot of donations beforehand in preparation for our campaign, so we weren’t able to do that [this time]. We didn’t post anything until everybody was safely back home, so we are getting some donations from there now but nowhere near what we normally do for a campaign, but that’s just the nature of the beast for right now, it’s the way things are.”

Cover photo: ChNPP
Feature photos: Clean Futures Fund

30 Celebrities are backing an open letter to Vietnam's new Prime Minister, urging to end bear bile farming and release the last 185 bears

 

https://www.animalsasia.org/support-us/free-the-final-bears-letter/?utm_medium=pr&utm_source=press

Dame Judi Dench, Stephen Fry, Alan Cumming, Chris Packham, and Dame Joanna Lumley are among more than 30 celebrities backing an open letter to Vietnam’s new Prime Minister today, urging an end to bear bile farming.

The letter, coordinated by Animals Asia, calls for the release of the last remaining bears used in the bile industry, an action that would make Vietnam the first country in the world to fully end bear bile farming. The charity is also urging the public to join the campaign by writing to the Prime Minister HERE!

Pills made from bear bile. 

A new poll released alongside the letter suggests overwhelming public opposition to the trade in Vietnam, with 87% of respondents saying they want the immediate release of bile bears. The survey, commissioned by Animals Asia, also indicates declining demand for bear bile in traditional medicine, with just 13% of respondents reporting they had purchased or consumed bear bile products, compared to 22% in 2010.

The letter states: “As animal lovers with a deep commitment to compassionate animal welfare, we join the people of Vietnam in their concern for the 150 bears trapped in tiny metal cages, sick, suffering, and alone on former bear bile farms across the country.”

Extracting bile from a sedated bear

Around four bears are estimated to die each month, making the rescue of the remaining animals increasingly urgent. Although bile extraction was outlawed in Vietnam in 2005, farmers have been permitted to keep bears in captivity. A 2017 agreement between the Vietnamese government and Animals Asia committed to ending bear bile farming entirely, a goal the charity says is now within reach.

The letter continues: “That’s why we are calling on you, your Excellency, to take the crucial and caring step of urgently mandating the release of the last surviving bears, allowing Animals Asia to take them into their care, before it’s too late. Securing the freedom of these last victims of the brutal trade of bear bile will reflect the Vietnamese public’s own support for an end to the cruelty.”

Actor and comedian Ricky Gervais, who previously supported an Animals Asia bear named Derek, stated: “I had to sign this letter, it’s too important an issue to ignore. These bears have suffered for long enough, with years of bile extraction and the horror of life in a cage. As a bear guardian to Derek Bear, who sadly died three years ago, I know the incredible recovery they experience at the Animals Asia sanctuary. They all deserve to end their days in safety and comfort as Derek did. I urge the Vietnamese government to finish their brilliant work to end bear bile farming there forever, and ensure these final survivors are freed.”

Sir Stephen Fry added: “I’m deeply saddened by the plight of the last remaining bears on bile farms in Vietnam. There’s a beautiful sanctuary waiting for them to live out the rest of their lives in peace. They just need to be released by the farmers. I do hope our letter to the Vietnamese Prime Minister means their cages will be opened, and they can be urgently rescued. With four dying every month, there is no time to waste.”

Dame Joanna Lumley stated: “Any sort of animal cruelty or suffering is so deeply heartbreaking to witness. Broken bears in cages little bigger than their bodies, barely surviving the brutality they have been subjected to for decades, is very hard to watch. I desperately hope that adding my name to this vital letter plays some part in helping to secure the release of the very last survivors of bear bile farming in Vietnam. With four dying in their cages every month, these poor majestic animals must urgently be freed.”

Dr. Jill Robinson, Founder and CEO of Animals Asia, stated: “The Vietnamese government is an incredible beacon for animal welfare across Asia. They have done more to end bear bile farming than any other country in the world. Now we ask for one final act of compassion for Vietnam’s very last bile bears still trapped and suffering in cages. We have everything ready to rescue these broken bears, but just need the government to help secure their release. Only then can we celebrate the end of bear bile farming forever in Vietnam. We desperately hope that these last survivors can finally see sunshine and can live out their remaining years in the peace and safety of our sanctuary.”

Animals Asia has rescued more than 700 bears since 2007 and currently cares for 185 bears across its two sanctuaries in Vietnam.

Most bears used in bile farming were taken from the wild as cubs and confined to small cages for life, often unable to stand or turn around. Many endured repeated bile extraction and lived in severe neglect, suffering disease, malnutrition, and extreme confinement for decades. Bears can survive in such conditions for up to 30 years.

Rescued bears are rehabilitated at Animals Asia’s sanctuaries, where they receive medical care, specialist diets, and physiotherapy. They spend the rest of their lives in more than 11 hectares of sanctuary space, where they can walk on grass, feel sunlight, swim, and interact with other bears for the first time.

Bear bile remains a significant driver of the illegal wildlife trade in East Asia and has contributed to major declines in Asiatic black bear populations. The species is now listed as vulnerable, with global populations having declined sharply in recent decades. Ending bear bile farming in Vietnam is seen as a critical step toward preventing further decline and potential extinction.

Help Animals Asia provide lifelong care for bears rescued from bile farming. Please donate HERE!