Premarin or synthetic estrogens....

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http://www.equineadvocates.com/premarinprintout.html PREMARIN: CYCLE OF CRUELTYMenopause affects every woman, and doctors have treated the symptoms of menopause for nearly 60 years with a drug called Premarin, which has become the third most prescribed drug in the world (just behind Tylenol), bringing its single maker over one billion dollars per year. However, the production of this drug has cost the lives of over a million horses. Several medically sound alternatives now exist which completely avoid this slaughter and cruelty and are safer for the women who take them. "The cruel manner in which Premarin is produced is outdated and no longer necessary," said Equine Advocates' president, Wagner. "With numerous medically recognized alternative choices for effectively treating menopausal symptoms, including synthetic estrogens, women now have the opportunity to end a fifty-eight year catastrophe for horses." UPDATE: See our section on Cenestin (www.equineadvocates.com/cenestin.html). Approved by the FDA in 1999, it has been dubbed "synthetic Premarin". Because of this latest development, we strongly believe that no horses should ever be used to produce estropgen replacement drugs again.

SECRETS, LIES & GREED

Since 1942, a drug called Premarin (pregnant mares' urine) has been prescribed by doctors to treat the symptoms of menopause in women. Premarin (conjugated estrogens) is extracted from the urine of pregnant mares (female horses). Because so much of this drug is prescribed, its production requires the operation of around 700 "farms", in which around 80,000 horses live their entire lives penned in tiny stalls, unable to turn around or meaningfully lie down, deprived of water, repeatedly impregnated, and continuously connected to plumbing collecting that urine. When they can no longer produce adequately, most are summarily slaughtered. Most of their offspring are either put in stalls or slaughtered. Over fifty-eight years of Premarin production, well over a million horses or perhaps millions of horses, have lived in cruelty and then been slaughtered. Only in the last twenty years has this dreadful secret become known at all. Premarin is central to what is called "hormone replacement therapy" ("HRT"), although it replaces only estrogen, not progesterone or the other naturally occurring hormones whose levels drop after menopause. This makes any estrogen medically controversial. Premarin is also controversial because the health risks to women of absorbing a substance made from equine waste may not be fully known. Further, Premarin is also said, even by its maker, to contain various unknown and unidentified substances. All of these issues have been buried by Premarin's maker, Wyeth-Ayerst, a division of American Home Products, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who have spent tremendous time and money to sell the notion that only Premarin can treat the symptoms of menopause. The practical monopoly Wyeth-Ayerst has achieved by avoiding these controversies and, at least so far, burying alternative medications brings Wyeth-Ayerst over $1 billion in revenues each year from sales of Premarin and other drugs (including Prempro, Premphase, and Prempac) made from pregnant mares' urine ("PMU"). As a whole new generation of women enters menopause, it is vital that they be allowed to make informed decisions about the drugs they should or should not take. This requires knowing what different drugs are available and, most specifically, how Premarin is produced.

CYCLE OF CRUELTY

Premarin is produced at Ayerst Organics in , Manitoba, Canada. is known as the "PMU capital of the world." Urine extracted from the mares on about 700 PMU "farms" in Canada and the United States is shipped to the processing plant in . The company sets the quotas, sets the price, and picks the PMU producers, as farmers compete to obtain contracts with "Wyeth" to set up PMU farms. The company also runs a "research" facility in Carberry, Manitoba (near ) which is operated like a working PMU farm. Security there is tight as the "work" and experiments are kept strictly confidential. For six to seven months of their eleven-month pregnancies, an estimated 80,000 mares are confined to tiny stalls where, contrary to Wyeth-Ayerst's explicit statement, they cannot turn around, groom themselves, or lie down comfortably. They are harnessed in with urine collection pouches fitted over their urethras designed to collect the precious urine. The urine then travels through hoses that lead to plastic containers on the ground in front of each stall where PMU farmers empty them when full for collection and shipment to Ayerst Organics. The urine pouches and the manner by which they are attached to the mares' bodies can cause infections of their vulvas and chafing of their legs, and makes it practically impossible for them to lie down. They are also tied by their necks to prevent them from turning around. These mares get little or no exercise, with some of them actually standing in that position for the entire six to seven months. Due to the nature of their confinement on the "pee lines", the mares are denied the opportunity to assume all of their natural postures. When sleeping, the mares are unable to enjoy the fully relaxed position of lateral recumbency (lying stretched out on their sides). Instead, they must sleep standing up or lying down in the more cramped position of sternal recumbency (lying on their chest with legs tucked up). There is no official government regulation for the treatment of PMU mares, only a "Code of Practice" written by Wyeth-Ayerst for the PMU farmers to follow. The mares are commonly fed and watered on a time-release basis. They are deliberately deprived of water so that the estrogen is as concentrated as possible. Mares are given minimal amounts of water 17 or 18 times a day. They can be seen trying to drink out of empty water bowls and are in such anticipation of each allotment that they continue to try to drink long after the water is gone. They also exhibit stressful and anxious behavior when they know the water is coming. Liver and kidney disease are common in these mares, as is swelling of the legs.

IT'S A HORRIBLE LIFE

In general, most horses live well into their twenties and thirties, but not PMU mares. The ones who are considered to be "good producers" can stand on the "pee lines" for as long as twelve to fourteen years before being scrapped at the slaughter auctions for meat. The same fate is a common occurrence for most of the mares who don't become impregnated. In the spring, when they give birth and their estrogen levels are down, the mares are allowed out in the fields again...but not for long. They are soon impregnated again and placed back on the "pee lines." Life for the mares on the PMU farms is so hard that one-fourth of them are replaced each year, even though typical life expectancy for the draft breeds used on most of these farms is twenty years or more.

BABY HORSE MASSACRE

A majority of the mares on Canadian PMU farms give birth on "community pastures," which are on public land. Many of the foals born to the 52,000-plus mares in Canada die soon after birth, unable to survive the harsh conditions of the prairies. The surviving colts are considered to be byproducts and the majority of them are sold for slaughter. Most of the fillies are either slaughtered or kept to replace the worn-out mares on the PMU farms. Most of the foals are sold at auctions in the fall, at which time they are between two and three months old. They can regularly be observed trying to nurse off each other. The colts are sold by lot where almost all are bought by "killer buyers" (middlemen for the slaughterhouses) and feedlot operators who fatten them up before shipping them to slaughter plants in Canada and the United States. There they are butchered and their meat is then exported to Europe and Japan as a delicacy (with certain cuts selling for $25 per pound) for human consumption. The fright and terror in these foals is apparent as they are herded through the sales arenas and then on to cramped trailers with canes and electric cattle prods. Some of them are loaded on to the backs of pickup trucks. Injuries are common, but veterinary care is virtually non-existent at these auctions. Young, frail horses are often loaded together with large, heavy horses with no one present to stop the cruel and inhumane treatment during the loading process. >>>>>>>>>> ETC. ETC.. ETC. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>