Some 30,000 foals each year are sold at auction as meat to butcher shops in Europe and Japan and there are many who claim that the production of Premarin®, a drug manufactured for Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), is to blame.

Frank Weller of the Premarin® Foal Rescue Caravan will speak on this issue on Tuesday, March 18, at a meeting of the Newtown Bridle Lands Association. He meeting will be held at 7:30 pm on the lower level of the Meeting House.

About 10 million women take Premarin®, the most prescribed drug on the United States market (according to the Shaw Creek Farm Premarin® awareness web site) . . . despite the fact that a growing number of studies indicate that sustained use of prescription estrogens could raise the risk of breast cancer. Sales of Premarin® and Premarin®-based drugs such as Prempac, Prempro and Premphase reach nearly $2 billion each year.

Premarin® – in use for more than 50 years – is made from PREgnant MARes urINe. According to Dr Ray Kellosalmi in a piece published in Conscious Choice, “In order to collect the urine that goes into making Premarin® today, 35,000 to 40,000 mares are kept pregnant year after year, tied in stalls for six months at a time in 480 barns located, for the most part, in rural areas of the Canadian province . . . and North and South Dakota.”

In the summer 2001 issue of Friends Of Animals, Leone Bollinger wrote, “(Mares) are often subjected to water restriction in order to produce a more estrogen-concentrated urine. Most of the foals born to these mares are considered simply by-products and are shipped to Canadian slaughter plants that supply the demand for horsemeat in Europe and Japan.

According to recent reports in the Canadian Veterinary Journal, it was not uncommon to find foals born on PMU farms dying of starvation and/or exposure. But Wyeth-Ayrest Laboratories, the Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical corporation that manufactures Premarin®, recently claimed the PMU industry has undergone reform – for instance, the practice of withholding water to concentrate the mare’s urine has been discontinued.

Spokesmen for the PMU industry also claim there are measures in place to have pregnant mares eventually sold or adopted to good owners, but opponents – who reluctantly agree there are farms which treat their horses humanely – say many thousands of mares and foals are still being sold at auction for eventual slaughter.

The United Pegasus Foundation sends representatives to September auctions every year in order to purchase PMU foals. Anyone willing to adopt a Premarin® foal (cost is less than $1,000 to pre-adopt) can apply to UPF at any time during the course of the year.

Mr Weller will speak on these and other issues at the NBLA meeting. The public is welcome to attend.

The United Pegasus Foundation can be contacted at 1-626-279-1306 (email unitedpegasus@yahoo.com). Locally, call Patty Wahlers of HORSE of CT at 1-860-868-1761 for further information.