Member of European Parliament Neil Parish and His Party Visit China

Neil Q. G. Parish, member of the European Parliament, and his party paid a visit to Beijing, Chengdu and Xi’an from May 23 to 28, 2006 at the invitation of the CPAFFC.

Neil Parish, a member of the British Conservative Party, has been a member of the European Parliament since 1999 and at present is head of the delegation of European Parliament’s relations with Australia and New Zealand. For a long time Parish has paid great attention to animal protection, particularly animal protection in Asia. Now he serves as the European Parliament’s reporter on the problem of bird flu.

The main purpose of Parish’s and his party’s visit to China was to know about China’s policy on protection of wild animals and plants andits practice of “extracting bile from the gall bladder of farmed bears”, hoping through the visit to enhance mutual understanding between Europe and China. During their stay in Beijing, Parish and his party paid an official call on the State Forestry Administration and the Ministry of Agriculture and exchanged views with the leading officials of the relevant departments of the above ministries on the practice of raising bears to extract their bile, prevention and cure of animal and bird flu and the cooperation between Europe and China.

Zhuo Rongsheng, director general of the Department of Protection of Wild Animals and Plants of the State Forestry Administration, briefed the guests about China’s protection of wild animals and plants and the progress of the protection work in recent years, and the practice of extracting bile from the gall bladder of farmed bears. Zhuo said, bear bile is a very effective traditional Chinese medicine and using bear bile for medical treatment has been a tradition in China for several thousand years. At present no alternative has been found to replace it in the treatment of certain diseases. Before the 1980s, China mainly extracted bile from the gall gladder of hunted wild bears, but after the 1980s China began to raise bears to extract their bile. In 1992 the State Forestry Administration formulated three policies: 1. No approval will ever be given to use of bear bile for economic purpose. 2. No approval will ever be given to setting up new black bear farms. 3. No approval will ever be given to export of products made of black bears. On this basis, the State Forestry Administration has adopted a series of measures. They are mainly: 1. to improve the bile-extraction technique to protect the welfare of bears; 2. to manage bear farms according to the state law and setting up of new bear farms must be approved by the state; 3. to formulate compulsory regulations on bear farming so as to standardize its management; 4. to strengthen efforts to check up and improve bear farms and resolutely shut down substandard farms (The number of bear farms in the country has been reduced from 480 to 68); 5. to work out regulations on the use of bear bile and its marketing. Director General Zhuo said, the Chinese Government is a responsible government, and its responsible departments take strong measures against illegal raising of bears and smuggling bear bile, and do not allow to watch slaughtering of animals. In China, the purpose of raising bears to extract their bile is for medical treatment, which is the need of the public. The Chinese Government’s policy is to raise bears instead of catching wild bears and improve bile-extraction technique and use bile only for medical purpose. At the present stage, no other medical ingredients have been developed in the world to substitute bear bile. What we can do now is to continue to improve the bile-extraction technique until we finally develop the substitute for bear bile.

Director General of the Veterinary Department of the Ministry of Agriculture met with Parish and his party and briefed them about China’s grain production, domestic animals and birds raising, output, import and export of agricultural and livestock products. The director general said, China adopts a transparent attitude towards the problem of prevention and control of bird flu, which is approved by the WHO. He stressed, all the agricultural and livestock products that China exports to the European Union are produced in epidemic-free areas. The EU should lower the conditions on its importing of agricultural and livestock products from China and strengthen cooperation with China.

In the suburb of Chengdu, Parish and his party visited the Moon Bear Rescue Centre jointly set up by the Animals Asia Foundation and the Forestry Bureau of the Sichuan Provincial Government, and the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, and expressed their admiration for China’s achievements in the protection of wild animals.