REDUCING DEMAND

Reducing Demand

We engage with the traditional medicine community and other users of bile to promote herbal and synthetic alternatives and reduce demand.

Our Healing without Harm campaign targets practitioners of traditional medicine, independent pharmacists and pharmacy chains. We also work with pathologists and liver specialists in
China and Vietnam to gather evidence on the implications for human health of consuming contaminated bile from diseased farm bears.

We regularly attend conferences to engage with doctors and encourage them to sign a pledge not to prescribe bear bile, and to advocate the alternatives. We also conduct surveys among doctors to determine attitudes to bear bile and find out how many have prescribed it in the past.

As much demand for bear bile comes from South Korea, we work with travel agencies and animal welfare groups to raise awareness among tourists that taking bear bile bought in Vietnam or China back to South Korea is illegal. In Vietnam we also work with law enforcement authorities at key tourist sites to inform visitors that it is illegal to pay for bile to be extracted at a bear farm.