IT took a while to start the old word machine going for this week's File. More often than not, an idea occurs and the rest just happens. Fingers on keys... not a problem.

But occasionally, anger and revulsion stem the flow. This can block the creative process as easily as it provides a stimulus - which was the case when a document from the World Society for the Protection of Animals landed on my desk.

It was not pleasant reading. The handout consisted of three sides of A4 detailing the horrific treatment of bears in China. The pictures supplied with the Press release - even by the horror-tolerant standards of today - elevated Mankind's ingenuity for torment of his fellow creatures to new peaks of brutality.

The report was the result of an extensive undercover investigation into China's bear bile farms released in the run-up to the bi-annual meeting of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Nairobi, Kenya, last month at which the trade in bear parts were discussed. A WSPA delegation attended the meetings.

WSPA'S report Inside China's Torture Chambers documents how thousands of bears are kept in horrific conditions in hundreds of farms across China, producing approximately 7,000kg of bear bile every year for the traditional Chinese medicine market.

Disgusting? Of course. So - it's fingers now firmly on keys and tapping away...

The organisation believes that China is planning to register some of its bear bile farms with CITES and thereby circumvent the existing international ban on trade in bear parts.

Such a move would hasten the demise of bears in the wild, with many taken each year to restock the farms, thus encouraging this barbaric form of "farming".

WSPA investigators found that almost every farm they visited bought bears taken from the wild. The bears are surgically mutilated, often by untrained workers with no veterinary skills, and "milked" each day for their gall bile.

These animals endure the most appalling levels of cruelty and neglect, with many wounded and scarred due to the friction caused by being kept in tiny metal cages just about big enough for them to fit into and where they are unable to stand straight.

The cages are suspended above the ground, so the bears are forced to lie squashed in their cages on a bed of bars, some with a constant stream of bile seeping from their stomachs. An open wound allows workers to insert a tube or piece of metal to "tap" the bile.

Bile is taken from them twice a day, during feeding time. The bears are fed a poor diet of mashed corn with apples, tomatoes and sugar and this agonising process causes severe distress to the bears.

Moaning and banging of heads against the cage is common, while some bears resort to chewing their paws to cope with the pain.

Mortality rates at the farms are high, between 60 and 80 per cent dying during or shortly after they are operated on. Those that survive this ordeal rarely live longer than 10 years, about a third of their natural life expectancy in the wild. The mortality rate for cubs bred at the farms is also high, with new mothers commonly eating their offspring.

Bear cubs are taken away from their mothers at just three months of age and may then be trained to perform tricks such as tightrope-walking and forced to box for the amusement of visitors to the bear farms.

Once they reach three years of age, the cubs are moved into tiny cages and begin to be farmed for their bile. Bears may stop producing bile after just a few years, after which they outlive their usefulness and are left to die or killed for their paws or gall bladders.

A single paw may sell for several hundred dollars - almost a year's salary for the average rural worker in China.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic growth in the production of bear bile products, which has spawned a market for a whole new range of items far removed from the formulations of traditional medicine.

Today, bile is used as an ingredient in shampoo, wine, eye drops and all manner of pre-prepared ointments.

In 1999, bottles of bear bile wine were handed out as gifts for passengers on internal flights in China.

WSPA estimates that more than 7,000 bears are farmed at 247 official bear bile farms across China, although the true figure is likely to be higher. Estimates of wild bear populations in China range from less than 20,000 (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) to more than 60,000 (China's Ministry of Forestry).

At an international symposium of the trade in bear parts held in Seoul last year, Chinese government representatives signalled their intention to attempt to secure permission from CITES to trade in bear bile products internationally.

But campaigners maintain that bear bile is a totally unnecessary product - there are at least 75 herbal alternatives to it.

In a world where two-thirds of the population seems to be starving, some might say that the plight of bears in China ranks fairly low on the scale of concern. Every day, in newspapers and on television screens, our capacity for compassion is tested to ever-greater degrees as we witness the brutalities of war and the destruction caused by natural disasters.

Nightly, we are left reeling from our daily dose of ethnic cleansing, whether in Rwanda, Kosovo or Zimbabwe. Cruelty, never something to respect frontiers, race or creed, rages like a forest fire from central Africa to the Balkans. We overdose on horror.

All this may be so. But in a world where Man's callous indifference to the animal kingdom sometimes seems to be little better than that shown during the Middle Ages, should there not be room for some compassion for these tragic bears?

Do we not impoverish and demean our own humanity by such gross ill-treatment of such noble, intelligent creatures?

The fact that the ghoulish product of such a practice is associated with alternative medicine is more reason why we should hang our heads in shame...

If you would like more information, write to World Society for the Protection of Animals, 2 Langley Lane, London SW8 1TJ. As with all issues, the better the awareness of a wrong, the greater the likelihood that change can be brought about.

On a planet where millions of animals are daily used and abused, some might wonder what makes bears any different from the countless chickens, pigs, calves and geese which live out their lonely, empty lives in airless factories and die premature deaths, unloved and unmourned.

But there is something uniquely awful about the plight of these bears.

Without doubt, the sooner their suffering is brought to an end, the better it will be, not just for these poor creatures, but for the dignity of the human race, too.