A bear kept at a farm in Ha Long

Police have arrested several suspected bear-bile traders for illegally extracting the substance from live undocumented animals at a farm in the northern town of Ha Long.

The farm owners could not produce valid documentation for 20 of the 81 bears found in captivity there.

Police seized more than 200 bottles of gall bile as well as equipment used to tap the bears’ gall bladders.

Five workers at the farm and two South Koreans visiting at the time of the raid were brought to the local police station for questioning.

Bear farms in Quang Ninh Province often extract bile directly from the bears’ gall bladders in front of tourists, whom they then sell the substance to.

Practitioners of Chinese medicine say bear-bile is a natural remedy for many ailments including fever and gall stones.

Since Vietnamese bear-bile farms made headlines with several exposes earlier this year, traders are cautious about who visits and only allow Chinese and South Korean tourists, according to local media reports.

Though newspapers have reported on the illegal bile trade for years, local police say they have yet to find concrete evidence.

Souce: Tuoi Tre