UPDATE, January 2017:
The drugs giant says it will stop buying from the most cruel blood farms we know about -- but only for its products in Europe.
Outside of Europe, MSD plans to continue to rely on the blood extracted from horses in horrendous ways -- a strategy we just cannot tolerate.
More and more politicians, organizations and regular people like you and me are speaking up against this horrific practice. If we keep up the pressure globally, we can get MSD to cut ties with the most notorious blood farms we know about.
It sounds almost too twisted to be true: across Argentina and Uruguay, horse blood farms are raising horses so their blood can be extracted and sold for profit to pharmaceutical companies.
The horrendous industry is driven by demand from veterinary pharmaceutical companies like MSD Animal Health (Merck Animal Health in US and Canada) that use the blood to extract a hormone called PMSG.
It’s unacceptable for a company that specializes in animal health to depend on the torture and exploitation of horses for its products. If hundreds of thousands of us around the world speak up and join the people who are already fighting this animal cruelty in South America and Europe, we can get MSD to stop their business with the torture-hormone.
Blood farm conditions are as bad as you’d imagine. Workers routinely take 10 litres of blood in a single extraction, a volume that can lead to hypovolemic shock, anaemia or even death. And because mares produce the valuable hormone only during early pregnancy, they are forced into repeated pregnancies and abortions. Finally, they are shipped off to slaughter when they become too weak or old to become pregnant.
In a cruelly ironic cycle of animal exploitation, the precious hormone PMSG obtained from pregnant mare blood is used by the pork industry to promote unnatural rates of reproduction among pigs.
A recent investigation by the German NGO Animal Welfare Foundation and their partners in Uruguay and the US exposed the links between American and European corporations like MSD and the blood farms. Now that we know that MSD is profiting from animal torture, we need to let them know that we’re on to them.
We have had major successes when we stood up to corporations profiting from animal cruelty before: After hundreds of thousands of SumOfUs members took action, major clothing retailers like Zara have committed to stop selling Angora -- a wool that comes from ripping the skin of Angora rabbits.
Let's team up again to protect the horses from suffering for profits!
More information
Animal Welfare Foundation.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung. 29 September 2015.
The Dodo. 2 October 2015.
Animal Welfare Foundation.
