2003-10-27
Posted by Susan K on October 27, 2003 at 20:38:05:
To the Australian who inquired about the PMU thing, just wanted to add a
bit to that. I didn't have time when you first asked about it to write
much, and thus just posted a reference to an article that could explain
what PMU meant. I'd like to take the time now to mention what I have seen
of the PMU situation first hand.
I have not been to the PMU farms personally, so I can't comment on that
from my own experience. What I can say is that we have two PMU rescue
horses in my barn, one is a belgian/QH cross who is five, and one who is a
registered QH with supposedly good bloodlines -- an example of the efforts
that are said to be being made to produce saleable horses that will not
end up as meat. This filly is now two. She belongs to a girl who is a
student of mine, and this girl bought her at an auction in Alberta, where
most of the bidders were meat buyers. I was not there, so again, I cannot
speak from having seen it firsthand, but what she told me was truly
heartbreaking: dozens upon dozens of little babies, way too young to be
weaned -- sick, scared and many showing obvious injuries -- some severe.
The tiny filly she brought home was all of three months old. She was sick,
terrified, and had a chronically spasming back, likely due to injury
during transport, that gave her a rather strange muscular development over
time, and a severe ewe-neck. That has now finally started to reverse,
though she is still unnaturally stiff through the back for a horse of her
age. Most of the other horses at the auction were purchased by the meat
guys for peanuts. My student is still haunted by the ones she couldn't
save. Her horse is now turning into a pretty little filly, though I think
she is small for her age, and probably will always be rather stunted. She
also has a severe issue with being in a confined space, and will
immediately attempt to climb/jump out of any stall or paddock without very
high walls. We can only speculate on the cause of this, but our feeling is
that this may have something to do with how she was weaned/transported.
She has improved a great deal with that issue with the work we have done,
to the point where she can be turned loose in the roundpen and will not
try to get out, but will work with her owner calmly and cooperatively, but
if left alone somewhere like that, she would go over in a minute. I don't
know if she'll ever be completely over that, though we are continuing to
work on it. She had been pulled from her mother, packed into a truck full
of other babies the same day, and shipped to the auction. So much for the
well-bred ones not ending up at the slaughter auctions. It is common for
babies to get injured in such transports, and not at all uncommon for them
to die. This last was told to me by a guy we had working at our barn who
had worked on a PMU farm back east a couple of years ago. I don't know if
they have made changes in their weaning/transportation/auction policies
since then, but I certainly hope that if they haven't, they will soon.
The belgian cross at our barn is a really sweet guy, but he has some nerve
damage that causes his hind end to buckle sometimes, also, from what I've
been told, likely due to injury as a youngster. A trainer was working with
him recently and doesn't think he will ever be normal or capable of much
work.
Of course, these are only two horses, but I also did some work with
Anthony Marr, a Canadian animal welfare activist who has received
international acclaim for his work in Asia, and for his efforts to save
the wild tigers (a documentary about him was made for the "Champions of
the Wild" series). Anyway, Anthony has spent several years researching the
PMU industry, travelling to the farms, talking to the manufacturers of
Premarin, and launching a large-scale, international campaign that has now
started to see some results. What he had to say about what he had seen did
not paint a pretty picture. I participated in a parade to raise awareness
about the issue last year with Anthony, and there were quite a few PMU
rescue horses in the group. They all seemed to have similar stories to my
student's, and a lot of their horses have had health problems that they
attribute to their treatment as youngsters.
I haven't kept up with the very latest changes going on in the PMU
industry, and from the sound of the posts here, my hope is that the whole
practice will be grinding to a halt sooner, rather than later. As for
Australia, I would be curious to know what kind of hormone-replacement
therapies are most commonly prescribed there. From what Anthony told me,
there are completely viable, plant-based alternatives to Premarin, and
very few women actually do better on Premarin than on the plant-derived
ones.
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