Filler: Taking a look at the bear market

Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.

If you are considering trading your prized Mickey Mantle rookie card for the gall bladder or bile of a New York black bear, be quick. A law introduced in both chambers of the state Legislature would ban selling, possessing, consuming, transporting and, yes, bartering, for these grisly (grizzly?) treasures.

It wouldn't ban killing bears, munching on bear seared medium-rare and encrusted with horseradish, or cutting off and wearing the skin of a bear to your despised sister-in-law's hellish Tupperware party.

Just the bile and gall bladders, that's all that's protected.

Both are ingredients in traditional Chinese medicines, and fetch thousands of dollars. New York is one of five states that allow their trade. But -- and this is said in the most animal-loving, "does it make me less of a man that my dog sleeps under the covers and wears bandannas" way -- who cares?

The big bear bile 'n' bladder ban came to our attention via a letter from Born Free USA staffer Tracy Coppola. We hunched over it, wondering why an animal-rights group would so vehemently assert that the law it favored would not impact "the trade in bear parts other than gallbladder or bile." Clearly, Born Free USA is not the kind of loose-cannon organization that would stymie trafficking in, say, bear uvulas.

Other questions arose. Are bears endangered in New York? Is poaching a real issue? Could medicine made from bile help with my "little problem"?

But the state Department of Environmental Conservation announced recently that it wants to expand bear hunting by lengthening the season and enlarging the geographic area where it is allowed. Commissioner Joe Martens says black bears are doing so well that they have expanded their range, increasing conflicts with homeowners and farmers.

So the experts say we must kill more bears, and the activists demand that the carcasses of slaughtered bruins no longer be well-used, because really, ancient Chinese medical remedies are as wise a use of animals as any other. The animals themselves have no preference.

In an interview, Coppola claimed the legality of the trade in bile and gall bladders in New York causes poaching, and allows people in states where the stuff is illegal to claim they got it from a bear in New York.

But the DEC says there is no evidence bears are being killed illegally for gallbladders in New York, and that the unlawful taking of bears is so unusual it is not a factor in managing their populations.

The dirty secret of bear hunting is that in terms of eating, bear meat is, at best, a crapshoot. If you bag one that ate fresh fruits and berries before your rendezvous, you'll get meat that's greasy and gamy but edible. If you kill a bear that was feasting on salmon and carrion, you'll have a dish similar to sweaty gym clothes left in the hot trunk of a car.

They're mostly hunted for sport and trophy, which is no better, and maybe a bit worse, than doing it for profit.

In China and Vietnam, "bile bears" are kept, legally, in cramped cages, their gall bladders painfully milked of bile through a tube daily. So China and Vietnam utilize the modern "agribusiness" model of bile extraction -- torture -- while here we let the bears have fun till we whack them. It's surreally like the store-bought beef vs. Bambi argument.

If Born Free USA were trying to save all the bears through a hunting ban, that would be consistent. This oddly specific law the group is touting, though, is like a caricature of the irrational feelings so many of us have about the animals (and the parts of the animals) we eat, the ones we flee from, and the ones we feed, name and adorn in wicked cute hats.