Premarin Horses vs. Food Animals

Today my friends and I were talking about Premarin, a drug used to menopause symptoms. I knew in the back of my mind that the production of Premarin involves torture for many horses but I wasn’t sure on the details. So today I looked it up. And do you know what? They’re treated just like gestational pigs. However nobody even eats their meat after they are slaughtered. Well at least I don’t think so. In this descriptive article Hidden Facts of Premarin I learned that the active ingredient for Premarin comes from pregnant mare’s urine. Yes, that’s the pee of pregnant horsey ladies. Who wants to take a drug with ingredients from horses pee? I don’t think that would be me but I’m a few decades away from menopause.

The article says, “The horses live in tiny stalls, unable to turn around or meaningfully lie down. They are deprived of water, repeatedly impregnated, and continuously connected to plumbing collecting that urine.” Doesn’t that sound familiar? That’s pretty much the same lifestyle for gestational pigs and dairy cows … although dairy cows are not often confined in this way. Ok, so what gives? One female’s night sweats are so uncomfortable that they justify torture and inhumane treatment of another female? I think if ladies knew this they would not take the drug. What if you had to be penned in a stall with a catheter stuck up your whohe all the time, continuously pregnant and giving birth never to receive any of the joys in motherhood? That doesn’t sound like a fair deal to me.

The article says that in 58 years of Premarin production, about a million horses have lived in cruelty and eventually been slaughtered as a result. That’s over 17,000 per year. So then I ask myself …. do I feel compassion for these horses? Absolutely. Who wouldn’t? But I think this Premarin deal has had just as much, if not more, media attention than the routine production, torture and slaughter of food animals. Let’s not forget that over 10 billion, yes BILLION, animals (not including fish) are slaughtered for human consumption every year in the US alone! Now I do feel sad for the horses but then again there are 580,000 times as many pigs, cows, and chickens enduring the same torture every year. How sad that we live in such a place that deems it legally appropriate to treat sentient beings in such a way.