No gain from pain

The public has reacted angrily to the China Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine's claim that bile is harvested from live bears using a painless technique.

Fang Shuting, the association's director, said at a news conference on Thursday that when bile-extraction techniques were first introduced in China, surgically implanted metal tubes were used that caused the animals great pain, but in the 1980s a painless technique was developed that means it is now similar to "turning on a tap".

Despite the association's support, the company actually makes lucrative health promotion products with the bile rather than medicines, and the results of a number of surveys show that the majority of respondents object to the extraction of bear bile and oppose the pharmaceutical company's listing attempt.