When I first read this article, I questioned that too, do animals really have that kind of awareness of self?
That will probably be debated for quite sometime, but why else would a bear ram itself head first into a wall.

sounds like a big steaming pile of hypocrisy.

do you eat poultry? beef?

Bears are wild animals.

If it's main instict is survival, it wouldn't be too surprising to see the bear do that to itself...the bear or animal, after all, may be smart enough to know that living to provide bile for humans is not at all a form of "survival". What do you leave it when you trap it and take away its main instinct, with no options? I think it's quite plausible.

Sure ain't no Asian drama but you're giving some animals less credit than they deserve. Some are even smarter than some people I know :)

I watched a documentary on this and it was just as sad as this original story by the OP. The fishermen would catch the sharks, pull em onto the boats then cut the fins off and throw the sharks back into the water.

Of all the fake shit China makes, why couldn't they fake bear bile. Geez.

previously posted in another thread, a good watch if you guys haven't seen it yet.

part 1 of 4.

channel link:
Ramsay4President's Channel - YouTube

Dont mean to keep going OT with the shark topic, but if you're interested in sharks, you should also watch Sharkwater. It was very informative, but depressing...to the point where I started signing online petitions to stop finning them.

poor argument.

That's implying domestic animals like cows are some how very different and thus have no feeling of pain.

Your right argument wouldve been a livestock don't get slaughtered in a heinous inhumane way such as draining out gallbladder

oh wait but I doubt they get much better treatment than that.

:( sad story, just teared u inside

Good for Gordon Ramsay, but he's a hippocrit. Case of a 'do as I say, not as I do."

He supports force fed Foie Gras.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-Foiegras4.jpg

so sad for the bear :(

In all honesty, if my grandfather didn't push for sharkfin soup for special occasions, I don't think I would ever buy it myself. For the price of one bowl, I could have 1 crab and one lobster!

livestock is not tortured on a daily basis. cows are retarded and could not survive in the wild well anyways. for the most part animals on farms get treated very well. they are kept as healthy and well fed as possible. they have shit tons of space to eat and fuck. If you really wanted to pick on they way north Americans treat animals. read some stories about how horses get treated. some of them have a pretty brutal life. also big and cows have thick skulls. Ive personal hit a cow with a fucking atv and it looked at me like I did no more than give it a dirty look.

Cows can survive in the wild, a dairy cow might not thrive under most conditions, but beef cows on ranches up north are one step away from being wild animals. Most of the farms I've been on in BC have treated their cows fairly well, but I've spent most of my time on dairy farms so a well treated animal is more of a concern than high production factory farming. Chickens suffer from they day they're born, to the day they die.

Many horses do suffer horrific abuse routinely, if people really new how frequently they're sold for meat they'd be shocked.

:facepalm:

This is not directed at you, but to online petitions in general. They're utterly useless and accomplish jack shit. Finners don't give a shit about an online petition started by a kid living 30 000 miles away.

Best way to stop shark finning is to start at home. Don't order sharkfin, tell your family not to order sharkfin, and boycott any dinners that contain sharkfin soup. My parents are the retarded kind who don't listen to science/doctors and insist that shark fin soup is healthy. You know, because some retard relative claims that it helped them survive cancer or whatever shit they had. I give them a choice:

They can either go by themselves and eat all the fake mercury shit they want, or we can eat as a family with crab/lobster/sea cucumber. Fuck that shit, you ain't having your cake and eating it too.

Food is different, really. Yes, ducks are killed but fois gras is awesome. Bears are dying in China for no reason but some silly ancient healing remedies that don't work or...well, don't work as well as real medicine.

I usually keep a balance of how much I like that particular food with how badly it's produced. I like fois gras enough to eat it regardless of how it's produced but I don't feel shark fin has enough of a unique and interesting flavor and texture to make it worth either the money or the cruelty to sharks (which are also awesome). Really, if you take out the shark fin from a shark fin soup, it would taste just as good. The fake stuff at night market is good enough for me. I've never thought it was worth the price of the real stuff.

That being said, if someone else is paying, I'll still eat it. I wouldn't order it but it's a shame to waste food and be rude to hosts.

So what your saying is, you care when you find it convenient.

You look down on those who farm bile, because in your eyes there isn't enough justification, but you enjoy the taste of fois gras so your willing to look past the suffering of innocent creatures. Shark fin is expensive and bland, so you don't personally spend your money on it, but if someone else orders it you'll partake. I'm sure if you believed bear bile actually had health benefits you could justify the cruelty just as easily as you do so in the case of sharks and ducks.

You sir, are a hypocrite.

people just don't know whats cruel. :okay:

Shark Truth

Making very good steps in stopping trade and finning of sharks
A good amount of states have started to ban as well.

Yeah, if I was stupid and believed that bear bile had actual medicinal benefits I couldn't find elsewhere, I'd be farming that shit myself. However, because there aren't any, that practice is just stupid. But if I found out tomorrow that powdered unicorn horn makes me immortal and infinitely virile but it only works if I yank it out of the thing while it's still alive, my only question would be when can we get started.

Clearly I'm not the only one that thinks this way as fois gras still sells despite the fact that everyone thinks it's cruel. Also, that video, while gross, shows the conditions of one particular manufacturer of fois gras. I personally don't think the actual force feeding is cruel but the way they run that farm is. I'm all for regulations that keep facilities humane as long as it doesn't destroy prices...like fucking organic vegetables for sale for 5x what the normal stuff sells for.

Watch season...3, I believe, of Gordon Ramsay's The F Word where they look at a fois gras farm in France, which is more farm than factory.

You think organic farmers price their stuff high because they want to?

:speechless:

Of course not. The price reflects the extra amount of work and overhead that goes into producing organic fruits or vegetables.

But just like how I wouldn't pay $32 for an organic cantaloupe, I wouldn't pay the premium on fair-trade, grain-fed, free-range whatever if that premium is too high. That's what it will come down to. Are you willing to pay $8 for a cruelty free chicken breast or $4 for one where you know the chickens are raised in cramped quarters and killed in one of those machines that looks like it's from Saw. Bottom line is cost versus benefits.

Seriously just make people choose, You can have one or the other but you can not take advantage of both...TCM or western/scientific as a remedy . In short order either tcm would be gone or the patients would be. I understand the thousand's of years of history but when your life is on the line what would you do?

I'll add that I believe the remedy for all aliments can be found in nature (including observations regarding tcm) but at the same time on a molecular level almost anything organic can be synthesized. Outdated practices should be left where they belong...History.

Wild turkeys, pheasants, grouse, rabbits, deer, elk, boar.
Wild sockey if you have any decent taste in sushi.

So... what's your point?