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Taken from the blood of pregnant mares, PMSG typically costs around €1m per 100 grams, making it one of the most expensive powders on the planet. The hormone is purchased by pharmaceutical companies throughout Europe to produce various veterinary medicines that are then prescribed for use on farms. They are especially popular on pig farms, where they are used to stimulate the fertility of sows.
What is PMSG?
Also known as eCG (equine chorionic gonadotropin), PMSG is also used to induce ovulation in cattle, sheep and goats. The vast majority of the hormone distributed in Europe is sourced from so-called “blood farms” scattered across Iceland.
Uruguay and Argentina used to be the main suppliers of PMSG for European pharmaceutical companies. That began to change after 2015, when Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF) in Germany and its Swiss partner Tierschutzbund Zurich (TSB), both animal rights charities, conducted a series of investigations revealing the atrocious conditions on blood farms. The investigations generated intense media coverage, leading four of five European pharmaceutical companies producing medicines containing PMSG at the time to stop supplying the hormone from South America.
Rather than kill the industry, however, the move simply led PMSG production to shift to Iceland: a further investigation conducted by TSB and AWF between 2019 and 2021 located 119 blood farms in Iceland at the time.
During the summer months, vets on blood farms extract up to five litres of blood from pregnant mares every week. The animals are also badly mistreated. “Mares are hit with sticks and put in tiny pens, while cannulae are inserted in an unprofessional manner, causing pain, stress, fear and panic,” Sonny Richichi, president of the Italian Horses Protection Onlus association, said in an interview.
As the mares only produce PMSG when they are pregnant, breeders repeatedly carry out forced abortions in efforts to gather as much of the hormone as possible. Around 30% of horses present on the farms die, many of them of malnutrition. Of the few foals that are born, the males are sent to slaughter and the females, like their mothers, are used for blood extraction.
What is Europe doing?
Perché gli eco-investitori si ritrovano a finanziare le “Big Oil”? A quali stratagemmi ricorre la finanza per raggiungere questo obiettivo? Come possono proteggersi i cittadini? Quale ruolo può svolgere la stampa? Ne abbiamo discusso con i nostri esperti Stefano Valentino e Giorgio Michalopoulos, che per Voxeurop analizzano i retroscena della finanza verde.
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