Why do 8 million women ingest horse urine?

Why Do 8 Million Women Ingest Horse Urine, Jan, 1994 by Cathleen McGuire

Derived from the urine of pregnant mares, Premarin is peddled by a pharmaceutical multinational as a panacea for menopausal women. Illustrating a classic nexus of ecofeminist issues, this essay exposes the drug's harmful impact on women, animals, and the environment, and suggests natural alternatives.

This article was originally published in 1994 in The FAR Newsletter.

Did you know that synthetic estrogen is a known carcinogen? Did you know that this popular drug entails the slaughter of thousands of baby foals? Did you know that most estrogen prescribed for menopausal women comes from the urine of pregnant mares?

Increasingly, women approaching menopause are being pushed by the medical/pharmaceutical industry to consider hormone replacement therapy. Underneath this ostensible concern for women's health is an issue that poses enormous consequences for women, animals, and the environment.

Ayerst, a pharmaceutical company based in Montreal, is a division of American Home Products, a multinational corporation. Ayerst has a virtual monopoly on the pregnant mare's urine (PMU) industry. Their plant, Ayerst Organics, in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada--the only one in the world--acquires estrogen-rich urine from approximately 73,000 mares on 485 PMU "farms" in the Prairie provinces and North Dakota. (In 1992, Ayerst paid PMU producers $44 million for urine, or about $17 a gallon.) Ayerst then ships the extracted estrogen to its main plants in Montreal and New York where it is manufactured into Premarin, the world's leading hormone replacement drug.

Through artificial insemination the mares are all methodically impregnated to be on the same eleven-month gestation cycle. Percheron and Belgian draft horses are the breeds of choice since the larger the animal, the more plentiful the urine/estrogen yield. From approximately September to April, when their estrogen production is highest, the pregnant mares are catheterized and confined to narrow stalls. An Edmonton newspaper article explains:

"The horses are kept in stalls with a kind of rubber cup attached to their business end. The urine drains through a network of hoses to a stainless steel tank where it's kept chilled until pickup.

"Flexible rubber bands keep the cup in place but allow a horse to move about in the stall or lie down. Groups of five are exercised every two or three days."

Animal rights groups such as the Manitoba Animal Rights Coalition (MARC), however, claim that in reality the only exercise the animals get is from sitting down and standing up. The treatment of the horses is very similar to that of intensively raised dairy cattle. According to PMU farmer, Rocky Cartier, "It's paid the same, it's handled the same as dairies, everything is exactly the same. In fact, the bulk room where the tank is was altered to dairy specs two years ago."

Anxious to avoid any hint of a horse abuse scandal, the industry compiled a detailed Recommended Code of Practice that farmers must adhere to. Yet groups such as MARC continue to expose inhumane practices. For example, the average horse measures eight or nine feet, yet the guidelines allow for stalls as short as six feet in length. MARC has also been conferring with a former employee from one PMU farm who claims she can document the death of seven mares.

Death in fact is a given in the PMU industry. Although some foals end up as riding ponies in the hands of private owners, the vast majority of the 75,000 baby horses born each year are treated as mere by-products. They are separated from their mothers, and trucked long distances to feed lots where they are reared for eventual slaughter as horsemeat. Ayerst refuses to assume any accountability claiming the "... farmers--not Ayerst--are responsible for sending the foals to slaughter".

Tom Hughes of the Canadian Farm Animal Care Trust (CANFACT) states:

"Colts and cull fillies are typically sold by PMU farms at four to five months of age, just as their mothers are impregnated again. They may or may not be fattened by the purchasers before slaughter, depending on horse flesh prices. Fillies who show the temperament and conformation to become PMU producers are kept as replacements for worn out or infertile mares, or are used to expand production."

Hughes estimates that 300,000 to 400,000 horses a year (including surplus thoroughbreds, wild horses, and pleasure horses) are slaughtered for human consumption by the Canadian horsemeat industry. Since most of the horsemeat is exported to Europe and Japan (where it is considered a delicacy), domestic protest has been minimal. With its steady and plentiful supply of foals, the PMU business guarantees ever more profits for the expanding horsemeat industry.

With huge numbers of baby boomer women entering menopause, the equally lucrative hormone replacement business is positioning itself for a gold rush. Ayerst is pouring $100 million into its Brandon plant, augmented by a $20 million Western Economic Diversification Fund subsidy from Canada's federal and provincial governments.