This centre has 21 beautiful, healthy bears. They all have intense gazes, strong paws, long nails, good sets of teeth, glossy coats and a spring in their steps. A tribute to the constant, unwavering care and attention that they receive here. Below is today’s food. Day in, day out, 600 kilos of food get bought, prepared and served to them by people who really, really care.

All these bears were saved from trafficking or from zoo environments. None can be released at this time as there is no reliable habitat to take them.

A bear’s gallbladder was recently sold in a legal Hong Kong market for $30,000 a kilo, so prized is it in Chinese Traditional Medicine for treating high fever and relieving pain. These sums of money are irresistible to the traffickers. Other bear parts sell at high prices too: claws, hide, meat, fat and bones.

Concerned about declining numbers in the wild due to habitat loss and hunting, the Chinese in the 1980s set up bear farms to extract bile from live bears, and 7000-plus bears were held in small cages, lying down and unable to stand or move. A stainless steel catheter inserted directly into the gall bladder so that the bear’s bile could be drained, and drained, and drained again. Tens of thousands of bears would eventually die as a result of this practise.

So cruel is this method that by 2001 – under intense international pressure – the Chinese Government agreed to ban the use of bear bile, saying that it would no longer license the developed products, although it is believed that bile farming continues, whilst research goes on to find a plant-based alternative.

I really respect the desire to have alternative natural medicines, but to kill one of these beautiful animals ( like Rosey below) rather than popping a simple paracetamol only shows me the depths of our selfishness.