Brutal business with torture hormone from horse bloodAnimal suffering on blood farms

Horses experience unimaginable suffering in industrial agriculture: liters of blood are taken from pregnant mares because it contains the hormone PMSG. This hormone is used in pig breeding, among other things, to increase the fertility of the sows and control their cycles, thus facilitating the work processes of farmers.

The use of the hormone "Pregnant Mare Serum Gonadotropin", PMSG for short, or "Equine Chorionic Gonadotropin", eCG for short, is widespread in agricultural animal husbandry: It is administered to sheep, cattle and especially pigs so that they have more offspring and give birth to them at the same time together with the other animals in the group. The hormone is extracted from the blood of pregnant horses. Operators of so-called blood farms mistreat pregnant mares in South America and Iceland for this purpose. The aim of this perfidious practice is to make farmers' work easier and to make even more profit from meat production.

More than 10,000 mares suffer in Argentina and Uruguay for the production of the hormone PMSG. In Iceland, around 5,000 mares are exploited. The conditions on the blood farms are brutal. The animals are forced into stalls, beaten and abused in order to extract their blood. The farmers take large quantities of blood - up to ten liters - from the pregnant mares several days a week for weeks on end. Most of the horses are emaciated and wait in vain for medical care. Many mares are left to die on their own. Others that no longer become pregnant are sold by the blood farms to slaughterhouses. Our partner organization Animal Welfare Foundation uncovered and documented the unimaginable ordeal the horses go through years ago. However, there are still hardly any regulations for blood farms. While the animals suffer, the operators earn millions with the hormone from horse blood.

There was also a blood farm in Germany. For over 30 years, the Meura stud farm in Thuringia exploited pregnant Haflinger horses for the pharmaceutical industry to produce medicines. In Germany, the blood collection was considered an animal experiment requiring authorization. The German Animal Welfare Federation pointed out the misery to the state ministry in the course of a TV report from 2019, which uncovered the practices. The ministry had known about the cruel procedure in Meura since at least 2016 and granted the stud farm a permit in an expedited procedure. Up until this point, the blood sampling was carried out illegally as no permit had been issued. An expert opinion commissioned by the German Animal Welfare Federation came to the conclusion that the large-volume blood sampling in Thuringia was an animal experiment that should not have been approved as it was not essential, not ethically justifiable and therefore illegal. The German Animal Welfare Federation filed a complaint against the Thuringian State Office for Consumer Protection. The public prosecutor's investigation is ongoing.

As the hormone PMSG is only produced during a few weeks of pregnancy, the operators of the blood farms do not want the mares to carry their foals to term. In South America, they abort the unwanted young animals if they have not already died in the womb due to the terrible condition of the mares. The abortion is brought about in a brutal, painful way with poles or by hand by scratching the egg membranes.

Sows are abused as birthing machines, even in this country. By using the hormone PMSG, the entire cycle of a group can be synchronized right up to the birth of the piglets. This means that the sows become pregnant at the same time and give birth to their piglets at the same time. PMSG can further increase the high number of piglets per litter caused by breeding. The unnaturally large litters lead to birth problems. More piglets are produced than the dams have teats and can feed. As a result, there are more underweight, weak or already dead piglets. As it is not economically viable for the farms to rear the weak piglets by hand, they die in agony or are killed. It is not uncommon for the animals to be stunned and killed incorrectly, resulting in prolonged suffering and pain.