Vietnam has agreed to rescue about a thousand bears from farms across the country in an effort to shut down the longstanding practice of extracting their bile, which critics say is inhumane and bad for the long-term survival of bears in the wild.

The Administration of Forestry signed a memorandum of understanding today with the Hong Kong-based conservation nonprofit Animals Asia, saying that the two would work together to remove the bears to sanctuaries. That agreement follows another made in 2015 between the nonprofit and the Vietnamese Medical Association, which pledged that by 2020 traditional practitioners would stop prescribing bear bile to treat ailments.

Bile, a brownish-yellow liquid found in the gallbladder that helps bears digest fat, has been used in