Critics of the PMU industry say ranchers heavily invested in the business will be left hanging when drug companies eventually win approval for a synthetic alternative to Premarin.
Pregnant mare’s urine is the main ingredient in the drug, a hormone replacement primarily used to help women cope with menopause.
An American animal protection activist said the manufacturer of Premarin, Wyeth-Ayerst, won’t think twice about leaving the more than 400 urine collection ranchers – 250 in Manitoba – high and dry when that day comes.
“I feel very sorry for the farmers with literally all their eggs in one basket,” said Robin Theresa Ducksbury-Russell, an animal cruelty investigator with the Denver-based horse protection agency Project Equus.
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“They won’t care what happens to all those horse ranchers down there. They only care about making money and they’ll pull the carpet right out from under them.”
Ducksbury-Russell’s grim predictions about the future of PMU farming do not worry Fred Clement.
Not only is the Rossburn, Man., rancher planning to stay in business, he’s sinking $300,000 over three years into upgrading his operation.
“It’s the number one drug in the U.S. It’s not likely to go from the top to the bottom,” said Clement, whose 72-year-old mother has been taking Premarin for 16 years.
The baby boomer generation is the best thing the industry has going for it, he said. More women are going on the drug, and they’re paying a reasonable price.
“My personal feeling is that we produce a natural product that costs women around 20 to 40 cents a day,” he said. “I’m not saying it can’t be done but I think it would be pretty hard to come up with anything that would be less than that in synthetic.”
The predicted end of PMU is not based in fact, said Norm Luba, spokesperson for the industry as executive director for the Kentucky-based North American Equine Ranching Information Council.
“The companies do not have the same product,” Luba said during a recent interview in Brandon.
“(The FDA’s) panel of scientists have said that the product they have is not the same product as Premarin, and obviously from our perspective that’s what we’ve been saying since the very beginning.”
Premarin has been on the market since 1942, and Luba says it’s here to stay, adding ranchers who have invested in the industry are better off than the average farmer.
“You know what the price per gram is so you’re able to budget your farm enterprise. If you meet your contract you know you’re guaranteed so many dollars and those dollars cover the cost of production and family living expenses.”
Ducksbury-Russell said it sounds good now, but warns farmers that the company’s line might change when mare’s urine is no longer needed.
“In my mind they should take a closer look because Norm Luba is not going to be around to protect their tails once a viable alternative is approved by the Food and Drug Administration down here,” she said.
“And that’s the end of Premarin when that happens.”
A May 1997 statement released by the U.S. health department said the Food and Drug Administration turned down the latest application for synthetic generic forms of Premarin “because it was not shown to contain the same active ingredients, and therefore to work the same, as the original drug in treating women with menopausal symptoms and prevention of osteoporosis.”
