How CAN Chinese farmers torture these poor bears... to line the pockets of quack doctors?
By Downton Abbey’s Lesley Nichol
MRS PATMORE’S flustered features crumple into tears as she watches vets and nurses tend to a sick animal on the grimy floor of a Chinese farm where, for years, bears have been imprisoned in tiny cages and milked for their bile. ‘This bear has had a terrible, terrible life,’ says Lesley Nicol. ‘All she has known is appalling betrayal from mankind, and it has all been for money – there is absolutely no point to it. Why she’s not screaming and raging at us, I don’t know. I feel totally ashamed.’
Some 6,000 miles from the refined manners of Downton Abbey, the indignation of the actress who plays kindly cook Mrs Patmore is easy to see. On a week’s break from filming the fifth series of the hit ITV drama, Lesley has travelled to the jagged limestone mountains near the ChinaVietnam border with The Mail on Sunday to see a British-run charity’s mission to stop the bear bile trade.
In a makeshift field animal hospital, an hour’s drive from the city of Nanning, she is helping vets from charity Animals Asia carry out health checks on a group of bears who have been subjected to excruciatingly painful bile extraction.
Over 10,000 Asiatic black bears – an endangered species known as ‘moon bears’ for the cream-coloured crescents on their chests – are confined in cages from birth, often too small for them even to turn around, in farms across China and other southeast Asian countries.
Some are blind or have had their teeth and claws hacked out, while
‘Their plight gets into your heart. It’s for ever’
many are psychologically scarred by their captivity. Others with terminal growths and cancers will see their struggle for survival end with a merciful lethal injection. Crude catheters are jabbed into the bears’ abdomens to extract their bile from their gall bladders. It sells for around £10 a millilitre and is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat everything from haemorrhoids and sore throats to hangovers.
Shockingly, many of these socalled ‘cures’ end up in Britain, which has one of the world’s highest seizure rates of illicit bear bile products. The Metropolitan Police’s Wildlife Crime Unit says it has seized more than 30,000 endangered species products on sale in London, including shampoo and a pile cream containing bear bile.
Even though effective herbal alternatives to bear bile are widely available, a report by the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC found there were more seizures of bear bile products in Britain from 2000 to 2010 than in any other country outside of Asia.
Bear bile contains high levels of ursodeoxycholic acid, a substance that helps animals avoid problems with gall stones during hibernation. For devotees of traditional Chinese medicine, it is taken in a variety of forms – in teas, tonics and wines, as well as in tablet form, face packs, toothpaste and shampoo.
But now, in a major assault on the global trade, Animals Asia has persuaded a bear bile farm near Nanning to renounce the trade and become a sanctuary where bears can live out their remaining lives in peaceful green enclosures.
Lesley fell for the moon bears when she visited the charity’s Chi- nese headquarters last year and is now championing its £3million fundraising effort to save around 130 bears at the Nanning farm from wretched deaths behind bars.
The actress cajoled her fellow cast members into making the appeal Downton Abbey’s pet charity – something that could have a huge impact in China where the Edwardian drama, dubbed into Mandarin, has an audience of 160 million.
Stars including Jim Carter who plays butler Mr Carson, Brendan Coyle (John Bates), Joanne Froggatt (Anna Smith), Rob James-Collier (Thomas Barrow) and Sophie McShera (Daisy) filmed a video to promote the Nanning project before Lesley flew to China.
They recorded their heartfelt appeal in costume in the servants’ hall on the Downton Abbey set. ‘It was beautiful – really beautiful,’ says Lesley. ‘They all waited until their lunch hours and did their little pieces to camera. They did it with great generosity.
‘What is even lovelier is that Raquel Cassidy, who plays Miss Baxter [Lady Grantham’s maid], asked wardrobe to make a banner which says “We love bears” which everyone holds up in the video.’
In the summer heat of southern China last week, the rescue began in earnest as the farm’s bears – including the bear she has personally adopted, named Pickle Nicol after Lesley’s childhood nickname – were anaesthetised and examined by a veterinary team. Some of the sicker animals will be transferred to an existing sanctuary set up by Animals Asia in Chengdu in 2000. Lesley was introduced to the charity by fellow Downton Abbey actor Peter Egan, who appeared in the 2012 Christmas special.
‘Peter told me that once you’ve seen them, they get into your heart and it’s a lifelong thing. It’s for ever,’ Lesley said. Last year, the actress flew out to Animals Asia’s Chengdu HQ, an hour’s flight north of Nanning, where 140 bears rescued from bile farms are living out their lives in a purpose-built 32-acre sanctuary.
‘The thing that blew me away last year was that bears abused for so
many years now had the confidence to let you go up close and give them something to eat,’ she says. ‘They are so stoic and so forgiving after everything they have been through.’
Like Peter, Lesley was hooked. When she first met her adopted bear last Sunday, her words to Pickle could have come from Mrs Patmore herself. ‘Hello sweet pea,’ she cooed. ‘How are you, my little poppet?’
Later, as she hosed the eight-yearold bear down with water to cool her in the sweltering heat, Lesley was delighted when Pickle comi- cally slapped her paw against her thigh in appreciation. ‘I felt an instant surge of love for her,’ the actress said afterwards. ‘This has been the experience of a lifetime for me and one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever done.
‘When you do pretend for a living it’s very important to see something real and it doesn’t get any more real than this. I’m so knocked out by what’s happening here and this just needs every ounce of support from anyone who can give it.’
On Monday, Pickle was anaesthe- tised for her health check. ‘Her teeth have been cut. There a lot of dental work to do. And she’s got nasty scar tissue where they extracted bile from her,’ says Lesley. ‘Her paws are very dry and sore because she’s never been on soft grass. She’s been on bars all her life. But I can imagine her in her own enclosure getting bigger and stronger.’
One of the most poignant moments of Lesley’s visit was when she met the bear farm’s owner Yan Shao Hong, thanking him warmly for his decision to abandon the trade. Mr Yan, the first bear bile farmer in China to agree to convert his farm to a sanctuary, says that he was persuaded by his young daughter, an animal lover. ‘I realised the process of extracting bile from bears is very cruel and it hurts the bears’ health very much,’ he said.
‘At first, I thought about selling the bears to another farm but I realised they would just be tortured somewhere else if I did. This way, our sick bears will have a brighter future. I hope it’ll set a good example.’
Mr Yan’s unlikely conversion is a triumph for Jill Robinson MBE, the British founder of Animals Asia who has been campaigning for 15 years for an end to bear bile farming. She hopes the example set will help persuade the Chinese government to end the brutal trade.
‘This industry is completely distasteful to the Chinese public now,’ she says. ‘People in China are asking: “Why do this to a bear when there are effective medical alternatives?” There have been TV programmes about it and investigations in the Chinese media. There is massive movement here now.
‘We have turned our whole strategy around by saying: “We are backing the Chinese public now against bear bile farming.” Everything has come full circle. It’s their programme. Someone said to me: “You can step back – it’s our fight now.”
‘I thought that was a terrific thing to say. It’s absolutely true. It is their country and they are their bears.’
Jill, whose tireless crusade has won the support of celebrities such as Dame Judi Dench, Ricky Gervais and Olivia Newton-John, is convinced that converting farms to sanctuaries is the solution.
‘It is a win-win scenario for the bears, the farmers and the reputation of the country,’ she says. ‘Bear bile farming is now seen as hideous within the country and in the international community.
‘If they continue with this, people will start looking at China and say, “They do care about animals.” People are too willing to write China off as a country that doesn’t care for animals and we know so differently. We know that statement is wrong.’
Lesley’s visit last week was a huge lift to the spirits of the charity’s team,
‘People in China hate this vile trade too’
she adds. ‘You can tell Lesley absolutely and purely loves the bears,’ she says. ‘Lesley has dived headfirst into this. She Skypes us when she’s on the set of Downton Abbey.
‘She’s not just an actress who’s doing us a favour – she’s become our friend. She has made us laugh, and she is thoughtful and kind. She has given up a whole week to come here and broken her heart doing it.
‘Lesley has spent the whole time crying around Chengdu and Nanning for different reasons, so her emotions must be a total rollercoaster. I am absolutely beyond admiration for her.’
Downton Abbey looks likely to play a leading role in the moon bears’ lives. Michelle Dockerty who plays Lady Mary Crawley and Phyllis Logan (Mrs Hughes) are among a line-up scheduled to perform comic skits at a fundraising gala for Animals Asia in London on June 19.
Lesley says: ‘Michelle has rewritten a song and it is hilarious – it will have people in stitches. Mrs Hughes and I are doing a song by Bernard Cribbins called the Gossip Calypso.’
In the video appeal recorded by cast members, Raquel Cassidy says the project in Nanning ‘has the power to inspire China, its people, its government and even the bear bile farmers to end this cruel industry once and for all’.
The character whose face is fronting the appeal would surely agree. ‘Mrs Patmore has a big heart,’ said Lesley. ‘She wouldn’t put up with this. She wouldn’t stand for it. Neglect isn’t right. Torture isn’t right. It has to end.’
For more details about Animals Asia’s appeal and to watch the Downton Abbey cast video, go to peacebypiece.animalsasia.org.