If you said, “Yuck—no way,” think again.

Millions of women in the United States—maybe even your mom or your aunt or your grandmother—take an estrogen-replacement drug called Premarin. What most of these women don’t know is that Premarin contains a nasty secret ingredient: horse urine! Does that seem like a strange thing for humans to swallow? It is—and it’s also cruel!

What’s the deal?
The urine of pregnant horses contains estrogens, which drug company Wyeth-Ayerst puts in its Premarin pills. To collect the urine, farmers in the United States and Canada confine tens of thousands of pregnant mares to tiny stalls for six months at a stretch. Many mares don’t see the daylight for months. Some farmers even limit the horses’ drinking water so that their urine will have more estrogen, a practice that can give mares kidney and liver problems. Within days of giving birth, the mares are reimpregnated; many go through this exhausting cycle for more than 20 years!

What happens to the foals?
A few are used to replace worn-out mares on the “pee lines,” but most are sent to feedlots where they are fattened, then slaughtered for meat. Claude Bouvry, Canada’s leading horsemeat exporter, says the pregnant mares’ urine (PMU) industry is his “biggest source of supply.”

These horses don’t have to die!
Dozens of other drug companies make medicines that are similar to Premarin by using synthetic or plant-based estrogens derived from things like soybeans and yams.

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