HANOI - Nguyen Thanh Son opens a freezer for a potential customer, revealing the ears and feet of a bear packed in ice.
He says they are still fresh because the animal was killed just three days before. "If you don't buy them now, I'll sell them to another client in the next three days," he says, offering to include 200 millilitres of bear bile free of charge.
A file photo of a bear. Activists have long called for an end to bear farms, which are known for brutal conditions. The animals are often kept in tiny cages and have their teeth and claws removed to stop them from harming or killing themselves. (AP photo)
Son acts as a broker for bear farms in Phuc Tho district, an area with 40 bear farms on the western outskirts of Hanoi. They were set up to "milk" bear bile, which some people believe to be beneficial in traditional Asian medicine.
Activists have long called for an end to the farms, which are known for brutal conditions. The animals are often kept in tiny cages and have their teeth and claws removed to stop them from harming or killing themselves.
Trade in bear bile was banned in 2005. Officials microchipped 4,000 bears to ensure that no more were taken from the wild after the old ones in captivity died, but poor government supervision allowed the farms to continue.
It is also illegal to sell bear body parts, but now a slump in the bile market has led many farmers to sell the animals for meat and for traditional medicine.
"Bears are killed and sold in this area," said Nguyen Xuan Hoi, the biggest bear farm owner in Phuc Tho. He used to keep about 85 bears when the trade was booming 10 to 15 years ago, but now he only has seven.
"I know there are fewer bears being kept around here now because too many have been killed," he said.
"It costs about 120 dollars a month to keep a bear, while every bile extraction brings in about 200 dollars," said Hai Thuy, a bear farmer who once kept nearly 40 bears but now has only four.
Bile was generally taken from the bears every six months or so, but farmers have been doing extractions every two months, which does not allow time for the bears to recover.
As a result, farmers like Hoi say the quality has declined.
The drop in demand is partly due to successful public awareness campaigns, pushed by non-governmental organisations. Local media reports have quoted health experts saying that bear parts and bile have little, if any, medicinal value.
The reporting has included stories of men who take bile to try to enhance their sexual ability, but instead become impotent or are hospitalised.
"If people take bear bile, it will destroy their liver and kidney cells and eventually it will lead to death," said Nguyen Xuan Huong, retired former chairman of the Vietnam Traditional Medicine Association.
"There is no documentary evidence showing that bear bile is good for sexual enhancement," he added.
The price of bile has also fallen from 16 US dollars to less than a dollar per millilitre this year. To cut their losses, many farmers decided to slaughter their bears.
A package of one ear and one foot costs between 1,000 and 1,500 dollars, Hoi said, while a kilogram of bear meat costs about 6 dollars. The leftover bones are boiled to make traditional bear-paste medicine.
One preparation favoured by some Vietnamese families is to soak the ear and foot in rice wine, which is later served as a traditional dish believed to invigorate and energise the body.
Under Vietnamese law, the corpses of captive bears should be destroyed under the supervision of local forest rangers, but there is little enforcement.
"I have never witnessed any dead bears in this region being destroyed [under supervision] so far," said Nguyen Thanh Hai, a veterinarian. "But I have seen many bears slaughtered for their meat."
Officials know that bears are being slaughtered, but there are not enough staff to enforce the law, one Forest Protection Department official told dpa on condition of anonymity.
"We had plans to prevent farmers from extracting bile, but they did not work," he said. "Farmers are in a hard situation now as they have to keep the bears without a profit. It would have been better if we had banned farmers from buying and keeping bears 15 years ago."
One farm owner, who declined to give his name, said, "The longer we keep them, the more we suffer. It's better for us to kill them and sell their paws and meat."