Man Fined For Marketing Bear Gall Bladders

Man Fined For Marketing Bear Gall Bladders

Thursday, March 17, 2005 at 16:48

 

 

Environment officials hope fines levied against a Saskatoon man for illegally trafficking bear gall bladders will deter others from doing the same thing.

 

37-year-old Pei Zhen Fan has been fined over $25,000 after pleading guilty to the offences earlier this week.

 

Fan was charged last year after buying eleven bear gall bladders from an undercover officer with Saskatchewan Environment.

 

Seven more gall bladders were seized during a search of Fan’s business.

 

Another four organs were confiscated by customs officials in Vancouver just before Fan was to take a trip to China.

 

Bear gall bladders fetch a high price on the black market because of their value to Chinese traditional medicine practitioners.

 

Saskatchewan Environment spokesman Doug Lucyshyn says it’s not known where Fan got the other bear gall bladders in his possession, but there’s a good chance they came from the province’s North.

 

The province banned the harvesting and sale of bear gall bladders in 1997 over concerns that too many bears were being killed for those organs and left to rot.