Traditional medicine practices drive demand for animal-derived products that cause significant welfare harms to tigers, bears, rhinoceroses, and other species.
Bear bile farming causes some of the most severe chronic welfare harms documented in any farmed animal. Bears confined in metal crush cages for years, with permanent bile extraction devices causing ongoing abdominal wounds, infection, and pain, experience continuous suffering. The extraction process itself causes acute pain. Bears on farms show stereotypic behaviour, self-mutilation, and severe psychological distress. Tiger bone medicines drive farming operations where tigers are kept in deplorable conditions before being killed for their bones. Many traditional medicine products involve killing threatened species — rhino horn, pangolin scales, seahorse — causing conservation welfare collapse alongside individual suffering. Synthetic alternatives exist for most traditional medicine compounds derived from animals.