The human mind is capable of generating unimaginable horrors. The entire history of our species is riddled with them. Humanity has never spared (nor does it spare today) atrocious cruelties towards its own kind, yet it is towards animals that it shows its very worst. One of the waking nightmares we are talking about is bear bile farms.

Inside these facilities, thousands of Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus), as well as brown bears and sun bears, are literally squeezed to extract ursodeoxycholic acid from their bile. The bile is extracted using invasive and painful techniques that cause serious infections, such as free dripping, the continuous dripping of bile from the gallbladder induced by crushing the bears twice a day.

What could possibly justify such cruelty? Were it not so tragic, it would almost be ironic: bears are tortured to produce an ointment for haemorrhoids and a shampoo. For millennia, Asian traditional medicine has resorted to these tortures to create ointments and remedies. Despite the existence of numerous effective and low-cost herbal and synthetic alternatives, this practice remains widespread. More than 10,000 bears are imprisoned in Chinese bile farms, while in Vietnam the number of bears held in captivity is around 2,400.

The life of these bears — if it can even be called that — is a slow and constant agony. The animals are often captured as cubs, confined in tiny cages that prevent any movement, their claws are torn out and their teeth sawn down to prevent them from seeking their own death, and they are "milked" until they die, which may come only after thirty years owing to their extraordinary resilience. As well as being perverse and wicked, this type of farming is illegal: Asiatic bears are protected by Cites, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, yet the "farms" operate with regular government licences.

Hope for these gentle animals has a face and a name: Jill Robinson, founder of the Animals Asia Foundation, an organisation established in 1998 with the aim of putting an end to the cruel practice of bear bile farming and improving animal welfare in China and Vietnam. The foundation works to free the animals, raises awareness of their situation and runs a rescue centre for bears that have been saved, allowing them to live peacefully after the torture they have endured.