Every year millions of women unknowingly contribute to the suffering of thousands of horses, and the slaughter of thousands of weanling foals.
image sourceFor those who are not horse literate, a mare is an adult female horse, a foal is a young horse, a weanling is a foal only a few months old, once taken away from its mother. Mares are pregnant for 11 months before delivering a foal. During that time they are usually active, living outdoors, and enjoying life. In one industry however, they are stabled for much of this time, with bags strapped to them for the collection of their urine.
The industry is the Hormone Replacement Therapy industry. To blame are millions of menopausal women using drugs made from hormones (Estrogen) found in pregnant mare urine. These drugs often have "PREM" in their name, indicating they came from Pregnant Mare Urine, PMU, for short. PMU barns house the mares for around 6 months of their pregnancy with a bag collecting urine. The bags are uncomfortable and may cause sore spots. The mares may spend 23 hours a day in a narrow stall that normally a horse would only be in over night, if at all. The foals are by-products of the industry.
Most of these foals are shipped off for slaughter, the mares having been already rebred.
Why not "sell" the foals rather than ship them to slaughter? There are several reasons for this. First of all there are very few buyers for weanling foals. A horse usually is not ridden until it is 2 to 4 years of age, and even then it requires extensive training. As such the cost of feeding and care for a weanling up to the age it can be ridden is not cost effective compared to simply buying an already trained one. Selling of one foal here or there is time consuming for the seller, when compared to the quickness of selling ALL your foals at once to a slaughter yard or even to an auction where meat buyers attend. Finally, some PMU barns do not want to draw attention to themselves so are selling foals to slaughter as a way of being discrete to avoid a public backlash. In the end, because there are so many more foals than there are buyers for, it is inevitable some would be slaughtered.
Numbers of mares used for this industry vary country to country. However it is clearly in the tens of thousands, having dropped from over a hundred thousand a few years ago because of public awareness to the problems associated with using these animal based drugs.
The industry has cleaned up somewhat in the past years. Better regulations were put in place regarding keeping the stable clean and such. They are also using horses that will produce more marketable foals, however, as mentioned, the number of foals still greatly out numbers the demand for them.
There are alternative hormone replacement medications, including those made synthetically or from plants, such as yams. Unfortunately doctors are under pressure by the Pharmaceutical companies to encourage women to take their pills. Many doctors are not even aware of where these drugs come from.
Other Causes for Horse Slaughter
A horse is a big animal, not like a cat or dog, you cannot simply euthanize it and bury it in your back yard. Many people who own horses encounter a time when they cannot keep the animal and are forced to sell it. This is easy enough if it is a young, quality animal. It can be sold quickly. However for an older or crippled animal, no such buyer may be found. Thus the horse is either sold to the slaughter house or, more likely, sold at an auction where "meat buyers" attend. Some good horse end up going to slaughter simply because there are usually more horses sold at one of these lower end auctions, than there are buyers for.
Every year drought or financial hardships leaves some horse owners unable to care for their animals, this often sees them going to slaughter. Horses are luxuries, and when people cannot afford luxuries, they must get rid of them quick.
Sadly many horse owners breed their horse simply because they can. We have seen the results of this in the cat and dog industry, where millions of pets are euthanized every year because of over population. If horse owners want to stop needless slaughter of nice animals they need to practice more controlled breeding and encourage better ownership habits.
Final Thought
Horse meat is used for zoo animals as well as being shipped for sale in Europe and Japan. However it must be noted that zoos and foreign buyers are not to blame for horses being slaughtered. The responsibility must lie in the hands of the horse industry itself, or as with PMU foals, with the women who support the industry by demanding products made from Pregnant Mare Urine.
