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Please Vietnamese, Say No to Animal Killing! "Everywhere you look in Vietnam, you will see bear bile openly for sale," said Tim Knight of the non-profit group Wildlife At Risk (WAR). "Wild bears in Vietnam are dangerously close to extinction, and the main reason is the bear farms." Asiatic black bears -- also known as moon bears for the distinctive white crescent marking on their chests -- have long been trapped and "milked" in Vietnam and China for their bile, hailed by some traditional medicine practitioners as a health tonic or a cure for a wide range of ailments. The "mat gau" has been praised for relieving pain, liver and heart ailments, as an anti-inflammatory and aphrodisiac, an elixir that reduces "heat" and the effects of alcohol. It has even been mixed into eye drops and shampoos. "Drinking bile can help reduce the harmful effects of alcohol," said Vu Duy Tien, owner of the Tien Tuu Quan traditional alcohol bar in Hanoi, who sells a cubic centimetre of the liquid for around 80 000 dong ($5). "It also makes you less drunk and increases men's sexual performance," he says. CONTINUES BELOW "It's become a cure-all," said Knight. "That's the problem we're grappling with, something that is steeped deeply in cultural traditions." The liquid is extracted through metal pipes in the crude "free-dripping technique" or, in more sophisticated operations, with sterile syringes and using ultrasound equipment to locate the gall bladder. The animals, usually moon bears and sometimes Malayan sun bears, typically languish in cages so small they can barely move, causing stress that sees some of them bang their heads against the bars and chew their paws.