A
couple months ago I was shocked when I saw an ad for Premarin Vaginal
Cream in
the Ladies Home Journal magazine. Pfizer
just won't give up and they continue to keep poor
pregnant mares tethered in stalls for the
length
of their pregnancy. Imagine too
that
they are given little water during this time
so that the urine will be concentrated. They
also have an attached cup under
their vulvas to catch the urine. This whole situation
must be cruelty personified for them.
A
few years back I read with incredulity that doctors were prescribing Premarin
for menopausal
symptoms and that millions of women were dutifully taking these horse urine
capsules. They proved very lucrative for Pfizer and very painful and
stressful for
the poor mares.
Thankfully,
there were some doctors like Dr. Christine Northrup who said women
should NOT
be taking horse urine. Time
would prove her right, and finally studies proved that Premarin
was not a healthy drug to take to address menopausal
symptoms. So many of us
who worried
about the Premarin mares breathe a sigh of relief -believing
that these cruel
Premarin farms would be a thing of the past and no mare
would again have to suffer
this
way any more.
So
you can imagine how sick I felt when a few months ago I saw an ad in the Ladies Home
Journal advertising Premarin
Vaginal Cream. It didn't take me long to contact LHJ
and ask them to cancel my subscription because of this offensive
ad. I asked them
if they did not care about the mares who
suffer
for this product? Obviously, they didn't
because they did not respond.
Well,
two more magazines I subscribed to had a Premarin ad. Woman's Day
and Good
Housekeeping are also no longer welcome in my home. Even the
evening news
programs are featuring an ad for Premarin. I hope that women will think twice before buying
any product which causes so much mare suffering.
SAFE
ACT
I was saddened by the loss of Senator Mary Landrieu's seat in Louisiana in
a recent run off between her and Rep. Cassidy. She has been a huge proponent of the
SAFE Act which would stop the sending of our horses to horrible slaughter in Mexico
and Canada. I hope that before she leaves office -House Speaker Boehner will finally
introduce this much needed act for the horses so that it can be debated and hopefully
passed. It would bring her and so many of us who care about horse suffering, a great
deal of relief for them. The one good thing re this is that I read that the European Union has notified Mexico they don't want any more slaughtered horse meat. I
hope this is so because I have read that Mexico's slaughtering practices are
particularly cruel.
HORSE FIGHTING IN THE PHILIPPINES
Years ago I had sadly read that horse fighting was a regular occurrence in
this supposed Catholic country. If so, I sadly wondered where were the bishops and
priests to allow this to happen. Or having tried, did they find out that the people
obstinately refused to heed their counsel? At any rate, today Brian Davies of the Network for
Animals e-mailed us that this cruel practice still exists today.
He wrote that despite the Philippine Government having passed legislation
which banned the brutal blood sport of horse fighting in 1998, it still continues in
some provinces because the punishments are so low, and the organisers are so powerful that corrupt
officials turn a blind eye. Also- high stakes gambling continues to draw crowds. He also mentioned that they thought they had wiped out horse fighting in
the province of Bukidnon in 2012. Their undercover team discovered otherwise. Now
Brian and his
team realize that they must refocus their efforts there and then work on
each province until this horror stops.
BLM ROUND-UPS
No discussion of horse suffering can omit the cruelty of the helicopter
round-ups of our wild horses of the West by the Bureau of Land
Management. These beautiful
free-roaming and majestic creatures are almost run to death by the helicopters, and
invariably some do die as a result. And then many of them will be sold at auction and
snapped up by the "meat" men who sell them for slaughter to Mexico and Canada.
Why is this happening? Probably because the government wants our public
lands to be used by the cattle barons. That is wrong because public lands belong to
all of us and should not be used for commercial interests. They might not also want to
get involved with a contraceptive program to keep the population of the horses in
check. It all boils down to selfish interests and not what is best for these beautiful wild
horses of the West.
Mohatma Gandhi got it right -- you can always judge a country by the way it
treats its animals. In my opinion, we have nothing to be proud of.
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