Equine Blood Farms

[Catherine]

This is something totally new to me. I have never heard of equine blood farms before.  They farm horses for their blood. In particular they need the blood of pregnant horses so they can extract Pregnant Mare Serum Gonadotropin (PMSG). It seems we use the stuff for a lot of things.

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&ur...uFNh4-QHqw


It seems rather crude to be raising animals for their blood so we can use it for our own needs. Most hormones can be synthesized now.  
If we need pregnant mares  then the horses have to be kept pregnant. What happens to all the babies. The males would not be of any use to these farms. What do they do with them? What happens to a mare who is too old to get pregnant any more. I am guessing she is not given a gentle retirement in a nice place.

I am glad there is a push to get this practice stopped.

[Tobi]

Yes I hope it is stopped too. Especially if there is another option to obtain that hormone.

At first, when I read the title of your thread, I thought it was a place where horses 'donated' blood to go to a blood bank for their own kind in need.....
However blood donations with animals should always be on a voluntary basis, and after a vet has checked the animal for fitness. Certainly not paid either.

Keeping any animal pregnant for our own use has to be wrong. Yes, what happens to their young?

[Catherine]

It seems like a very crude way to get the hormone. I don't know if it is being synthesized, but I am sure it could be.

There is no way the horses are being treated well all their lives. I am sure they look after the ones who are being bled regularly, but old mares would have no use.  The foals would be removed at birth and the mother made pregnant as soon as possible. The hormone is produced when the mare is pregnant. A non pregnant mare would be considered a non productive mare.

I don't even know how hard the bleeding process is for the horses.

The whole thing is very primitive. We are still bleeding other animals to get "medicine" from them. It hardly seems like something that should be done in the 21st century.

[Tobi]

(01-24-2017, 04:46 PM)Catherine Wrote: The whole thing is very primitive. We are still bleeding other animals to get "medicine" from them. It hardly seems like something that should be done in the 21st century.

We are given all the medicines we need by Nature.
Herbs, and lifestyle adjustments where necessary are the only things we need. (If only people would fully realise that.) We should not be exploiting any animal for what we need.
Blood donations for other animals in need are a good idea, I think.  But that is different. The only stress involved with that is being attended by a vet, and the needle of course. But only a small amount is taken and shouldn't be a problem for the donor so long as they are fit and well.

[Catherine]

Blood donations are one thing, but this is keeping animals so we can bleed them because we want something in their blood. The horses are keep pregnant as much as possible and the hormone is sometimes used in the factory farming of pigs. I think they use it to trigger ovulation in the pigs so they can get them all pregnant at the same time.

I agree that most of what we need is available in nature. The Amazon rain forest alone contains more medicine than we will ever need. Some we haven't even found yet. We could explore that treasure trove for years and not exhaust the possibilities. There is no need to use animals the way we do.

I knew that at one point they used pregnant mare's serum for medical purposes. It never occurred to me that they were still harvesting serum from pregnant mares.

They no longer get insulin from animals. They are able to synthesize it. Better would be to prevent diabetes in the first place. That would require some dietary and lifestyle changes. We can change how we do things if we want to.