Neil Parish MP, Chairman of the Associate Parliamentary Group on Animal Welfare, met with a delegation of Chinese officials from the Sichuan Forestry Department, along with the China Wildlife Conservation Association and Animals Asia Founder and CEO Jill Robinson MBE and Director of Animal Welfare, David Neale.During the meeting, which took place on Monday 16th November, Neil and the delegates discussed the progress of ending bear farming in China. The Asiatic Bear, also known as the “Moon Bear”, is intensively farmed for its bile; which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. There are currently 7,000 bears on bear-farms in China. Bile is extracted from the bears' gallbladders twice a day through a surgically implanted tube. Often the farmers just push a hollow steel stick through a bear's abdomen and the bile runs into a basin under the cage. Surgery to insert the tube or stick is seldom performed by veterinarians.Roughly half of the bears die from infections or other complications and the damage caused by bile leaking back into the abdomen, together with infection from the permanently open hole causes considerable pain to the bears, who are often kept in very unhygienic conditions.Neil Parish has been a passionate campaigner against bear bile farming and in 2006 went to China with a delegation of Members of the European Parliament to see the bear farms first hand and meet with animal welfare groups and conservationists. Whilst there, MEPs urged the Chinese government to escalate efforts to end bear bile farming by the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.Speaking at the meeting, Mr Parish said:“The meeting with Animal Asia and the Forestry Department was very constructive. There is a growing consensus in China that the bear bile farming, a practice that causes the animal extreme pain, should be stopped, especially when there are cheaper and less dangerous herbal and synthetic alternatives to bear bile.”