Photo: Steve Gregory under a Creative Commons license.
This headline might surprise you if you didn't know that the bile produced by bears' gall bladders is a valuable commodity in traditional Chinese medicine. The commercial nature of the bile leads not only to the killing of bears, but to "bear farming" - the extremely painful process of "milking" bile from living bears. While bear farming takes place in China, Vietnam and Korea, the value of bile leads to the killing of bears in the United States. But this week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a ban on the sale and transportation of bear gallbladders and bile throughout the state.
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