The estrogen used for hormone replacement therapy came from the urine of specially kept pregnant mares. What’s going to happen to all those horses, now that thousands of women are no longer taking HRT? The answer: they’ll be slaughtered for horsemeat.
Keith Morrison writes for NBC News that many of the mares whose urine was used to produce HRT will be sold for horsemeat, which is popular in Europe and Japan. Premarin, which was made from their urine, was once a $2 billion business. Since estrogen could only be extracted from the urine of pregnant mares, there are lots of extra foals that may be slaughtered as well.
Animal activists have long complained about the way these animals were treated. They were confined to narrow stalls for 20 hours a day, strapped to urine collection devices. Gynecologist Ray Kellosalmi says, “That to me is nothing short of torture. It’s subtle torture, but it is still torture… Horses evolved through millennia in wide open spaces. They’re not animals that should be subject to factory farming conditions?These are pregnant horses now, and the only place they are going to is feed lots, and from there, to slaughter.”
How can we gain the wisdom to do the right thing?
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