As I was listening to NPR the other day, I was shocked to hear the words, "this weather report brought to you by Premarin." Premarin is a name I have thankfully heard very rarely in advertising, and I was especially surprised to hear it on public broadcasting now that awareness about the drug's link to horse abuse and slaughter is becoming more widely known.
Premarin is a hormone replacement therapy drug, used by many women going through menopause. The main ingredient, as few of its users know, is urine from pregnant mares (PREgnant MARes urINe is literally where the name originated). Premarin is manufactured by the Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical corporation Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories. It's parent company is American Home Products, and both have large influence in the media and spend millions of dollars on advertising.
In order to collect the urine, there are several farms across North America, many of them in Canada and the Midwest. Most horses on the farms are kept in narrow stalls with their heads tied, with a partial harness holding a cup to collect urine. This makes it impossible for them to move more than a step or two in any dirrection, and often makes it difficult to lie down. The mares are kept in these stalls from October through foaling in the spring, then are bred again over the summer and go back to the tie stalls during the following October. They have little or no regular exercise,
But aside from the terrible treatment most "PMU" (Pregnant Mares' Urine) mares are subject to, there is the inevitable fact that each one of these mares gives birth every spring. Young foals are of no use to the owners of the "pee farms," with the possible execption of a few females which they might keep until they are mature enough to be bred and join their mothers in the tie stalls. As a result, almost all of the PMU foals - of which about 30,000 are born each year - are separated from their mothers after only 3-4 months, rather than the usual six-month period. They are sent to open feedlots until they obtain a desirable weight, then are shipped to slaughterhouses and killed.
Many grassroots organizations try to rescue and adopt out these unwanted foals, and some farm owners have even begun to pay attention to foals' breeding in an attempt to sell them as pleasure horses; however, in 2000, only 500 foals were rescued - 500 out of 30,000. This number has undoubtably risen a little in recent years, as awareness has increased, but there are still many foals being slaughtered each year, mostly for human consumption in Europe.
There are synthetic and plant-based alternatives to Premarin-based drugs, such as Prempac, Prempro and Premphase, available to women today, though for decades Premarin was the most perscribed drug for Estrogen Replacement Therapy (ERT). Wyeth-Ayerst has done as much as possible to prevent cheaper synthetics from gaining FDA approval, but there are other options which are growing in popularity as the public learns more about PMU farms. There are also possible breast cancer risks associated with long-term use of Premarin. However, there are still many horses sent to slaughter each year, and a large population that is not aware of this horrible cycle of abuse and slaughter.
For more information:
http://www.hsus.org/...
http://www.ahdf.org/...
http://www.equineadvocates.com/...
http://www.womens-menopause-health.com/...