S8. E1: Gemunu de Silva: Vampire Blood Farms
“I mean this is the crazy thing about it, in 35 years of doing animal protection investigations I didn't know this existed. It wasn't even a thing, because it sounds it sounds too crazy to actually believe - that you'd get blood from pregnant horses and then it helps productivity in pigs.”
– Gemunu de Silva
Gemunu de Silva is the co-founder of Tracks Investigations. He is a filmmaker and an activist who's been investigating and documenting animal rights abuses since the 1980s. Tracks has completed over 260 investigations. 35 animal rights and protection organizations have benefited from their work in 57 countries.
Gem has been on the podcast before - in fact, he's becoming a regular. This time he’s here to talk about one of Track’s most recent investigations, horse blood farms in Iceland.
Yes, it's as horrific as it sounds:
Semi-wild pregnant horses are corralled into restraint boxes to have their blood taken, for the hormone, Pregnant Mare Serum Gonadotropin (PMSG).
The PMSG is then converted into powder and shipped to factory farms in the US, UK, and EU. It's used in pigs (mostly), to increase reproduction.
We do an astonishing number of terrible things to non-human animals all over the planet, but this one really shocked me. Not only is this industry incredibly cruel but it's also just creepy.
Not many people know that this industry even exists. After Track's investigation was released in Iceland, much of the country went into an uproar and hopefully it will very soon be banned.
It was an absolute honor to have Gem back on the show to kick off season 8!
Please listen and share.
In gratitude,
Elizabeth Novogratz
Learn More About Tracks Investigations
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Transcript:
Gem: [00:00:15] I mean, this is the crazy thing about it. You know, I've in 35 years of doing animal protection investigations, I didn't know this has existed, that it wasn't even a thing, you know, because it sounds it sounds too crazy to actually believe, isn't it, really, that you'd get blood from pregnant horses and then helps productivity in pigs.
Elizabeth: [00:00:44] Hi. I'm Elizabeth Novogratz. This is Species Unite. We have a favor to ask. If you like today's episode and you have a spare minute, could you please rate and review species, unite on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts? It really helps people to find the show. This conversation is with Gemunu de Silva. Gem has been on the podcast before. He's the co-founder of Tracks Investigations. He's a filmmaker and an activist who's been investigating and documenting animal rights since the 1980s. I met up with Gem in London a couple of weeks ago to talk about one of their latest investigations. It's something I never heard of before, and it absolutely astounded me. Gem thank you so much for being here. It's really good to see you and to be back in London.
Gem: [00:01:53] Thanks Beth for inviting me back on to the Species Unite podcast. It's always a pleasure to come back.
Elizabeth: [00:01:58] I love that you are a regular. So for people who haven't heard your other episodes, will you give a little background of who you are and what you do?
Gem: [00:02:07] I'm the executive director of Tracks Investigations. This is an investigations agency that I set up 15 years ago to help animal protection groups around the globe investigate animal cruelty. So far, we've done almost 270 projects in six continents, in 58 countries for 40 NGOs. So we kind of do a lot of investigations on how we use animals for food, farming, companionship, and entertainment. Basically, any way that we use animals and potentially abuse animals, we try and investigate it for specific NGOs.
Elizabeth: [00:02:51] How many countries are you in right now?
Gem: [00:02:53] This year we've kind of been in six countries. The project that we're going to talk about is Iceland. We've been in France, Belgium, Turkey, Germany, and we're just about to go to Romania in two days.
Elizabeth: [00:03:09] Nice. You cover a lot of ground.
Gem: [00:03:10] Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of animal issues around the world.
Elizabeth: [00:03:14] I was just telling someone the other day they were asking me about better and worse places, and of course there are better and worse places. But I was like, you really can't throw a rock without some sort of abuse going on.
Gem: [00:03:24] The other thing is that a lot of animal industries are interconnected. So for example, we've done investigations into primate farms or the international animal research industry and where we've investigated the wild capture of primates and factory farms of primates in perhaps Asia and Africa, for example, been to Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Mauritius, and where we filmed monkey trapping gangs and then and got footage of monkeys torn from the wild to be sent to factory farms in Asia. Then these monkeys are shipped right across the world to Europe and to the USA to be used in animal research. So a lot of the projects that we do aren't just specifically centered on one country, you know, it's an interconnected world that we're living in. Unfortunately, animal abuse is also interconnected as well, you know, across continents.
Elizabeth: [00:04:29] The reason I really wanted to see you, aside from just wanting to see you, is because Tracks you guys did this investigation this year in Iceland. Not only did the whole thing just shock me because I'd never heard of this, but it's really eerie on top of the fact that it's like I had no idea this was happening. So will you, first of all, just explain what this whole thing was.
Gem: [00:04:54] We were approached seven years ago by two animal welfare NGOs, Tish Husband, who are based in Switzerland and Animal Welfare Foundation, which were based in Germany, to investigate blood farms. I've been involved in animal protection investigations for 35 years, and I'd never even heard anything about blood farms. So blood farms are when blood is extracted from pregnant mares.
Elizabeth: [00:05:24] Horses.
Gem: [00:05:24] Horses, yeah. It's actually to produce a hormone called PMSG, pregnant mare serum gonadotropin. These hormones are then implanted into animals in the factory farming business in Europe and the US. So it's basically to try and increase productivity of farmed animals and to help synchronize birthing of farmed animals.
Elizabeth: [00:05:52] So, they'll all be on the same cycle?
Gem: [00:05:55] They'll be on the same cycle. So yeah, exactly. They will all be on the same cycle. They will give birth at the same time. So it will help improve and also increase productivity of pigs. It's mainly used in the pig industry, occasionally used in the cattle industry.
Elizabeth: [00:06:08] Meaning that by productivity, meaning they'll have more babies.
Gem: [00:06:11] Yeah, exactly. They'll have more babies and they'll have the babies at the same time. If they have the babies at the same time, it means they go to the slaughter at the same time.
Elizabeth: [00:06:21] So it saves money.
Gem: [00:06:22] Yeah, it's all about money. Of course it's all about money.
Elizabeth: [00:06:25] Who thought this up?
Gem: [00:06:27] Well, this is crazy. This industry has been going on for 40 years. I often wonder, how did they work out that if you extract blood from a horse, there's a hormone in that, which can improve productivity? I really don't know who thought it out, but obviously Big AG found out that there was a connection. Then they decided to produce it. So I had no idea until 2015, that this existed. So this organization, apparently they're blood farms that exist in Uruguay and Argentina. Would you go and investigate this issue? So over the next three years, we went to 2015, 2017, 2018. We went to Uruguay and Argentina to collect evidence of this blood extraction process. In those countries, there's 10,000 mares or horses being used for this production and in very small locations basically, or a very few locations. It's quite an industrialized process and it's quite disturbing because these are semi wild horses basically living on pastures.
Elizabeth: [00:07:45] Okay.
Gem: [00:07:45] In Argentina and and in Uruguay, they're kind of ranched or corralled, you know, gauchos into these specific areas to actually extract the blood. Of course, I should say this, these are pregnant mares. So, in Argentina and Uruguay, these horses are made pregnant twice a year, then their fetuses are aborted. They are made pregnant just so you can get the blood from the mares.
Elizabeth: [00:08:16] How often do they take the blood?
Gem: [00:08:18] In Argentina and Uruguay, they take the blood over a period of three months. You know, while they're pregnant, etc.
Elizabeth: [00:08:26] And then they abort.
Gem: [00:08:27] And then they abort them, yeah. So it's a very distressing process of actually these wild animals being captured and then corralled with dogs and whips. It's quite a brutal process and then the blood is actually then extracted and then collected and taken away to the lab to be sent over to Europe basically, and be processed.
Elizabeth: [00:08:54] What happens to the horses? Do they get slaughtered at the end?
Gem: [00:08:57] At the end, the horses get slaughtered. They're knackered, you know, they're knackered. They get diseased. They're anemic. We filmed in Argentina and Uruguay, these really emaciated horses, you know, skin and bones, basically. So they're literally just used for blood. You know, it's been described as vampire blood farms because you're just sucking the blood out of these horses.
Elizabeth: [00:09:20] It's horrifying.
Gem: [00:09:20] Yeah, it's horrifying. So as a result of these investigations we did have a bit of success or should I should say the organizations we worked for had a couple of, you know, some success. So three major drug companies had decided to stop the import of PMSG from South America as a result of the footage because they saw the processes were not as how they anticipated it was. They thought they can't really be involved with this.
Elizabeth: [00:09:52] Which is awesome, but there's still a bunch of people using it.
Gem: [00:09:55] Which is awesome. Which probably brings us back to our next question is our latest investigation in Iceland.
Elizabeth: [00:10:01] I'm so curious how you even heard about what was happening in Iceland.
Gem: [00:10:05] So again, I mean, the beauty of Tracks is we're kind of investigative specialists. So our job is really to do the investigations. These two organizations that we worked with, Tish Husband and Animal Welfare Foundation, found out that this blood horse extraction was happening in Iceland.
Elizabeth: [00:10:24] Were you shocked?
Gem: [00:10:25] It's a crazy world, you know. So I should say I'm never shocked exactly what we're asked to do.
Elizabeth: [00:10:31] But Iceland, I mean Iceland is like pride and joy as their horses.
Gem: [00:10:35] Exactly. I've been to Iceland and it's one of the major tourist attractions. I'll go and see Icelandic horses. You know, they kind of put them up on their tourist brochures. There's a great pride in Icelandic horses. If you watch any travel programs by Iceland, they'll inevitably talk about the uniqueness of the Icelandic horse because they've got a special gate and they can trot in a certain way.
Elizabeth: [00:11:01] If you take a horse out of Iceland, like you import one to Europe or the U.S., it's never allowed to go back. They don't want anything messing with the bloodlines. They're very serious about their horses.
Gem: [00:11:11] Well, there's 70,000 Icelandic horses out of a population of 360,000 people. So yeah, it's an absolute pride and joy. So it was a shock to me that they were doing this because as you say, Beth, it's a really shady business. It's a creepy business. The one thing I should say about Iceland is to actually get the PMSG, this pregnant mare serum gonadotropin. They don’t abort the fetus in Iceland. They actually allow the mares to have foals which are then sold off for meat.
Elizabeth: [00:11:47] So they're slaughtered.
Gem: [00:11:48] So there's slaughter.
Elizabeth: [00:11:49] I don't know which is worse.
Gem: [00:11:51] I know, but I should make it there. There is a slight distinction. In Iceland, the period of extraction happens for about ten weeks.
Elizabeth: [00:12:00] Okay. One thing I noticed that was shocking to me in the video is they're beating these horses with, like, steel rods and big wooden planks. It's violent.
Gem: [00:12:11] Yeah. I mean. It was really interesting. Just as we were about to do the investigation, the Icelandic farmer company produced their own video. I think they must have perhaps gathered perhaps from the previous campaigners visits that a spotlight was being shone on their industry and they produced this really slick promo video, which kind of portrayed this blood extraction process as nothing much more than a pinprick basically. That there was a bit of blood taken from horses. The horses were looked after. They were absolutely fine. It was all done under very calm conditions. Of course, the reality was very different. We managed to put a number of cameras at a few blood farms in Iceland. There's about over 100 blood farms in Iceland. I should say these are not like what we've seen in South America, where they're kind of industrialized. These are basically wooden shacks, basically in the middle of nowhere where horses are corralled into them. Then they start the extraction process.
Elizabeth: [00:13:25] They look archaic. I mean, it looks like a little torture box, right?
Gem: [00:13:29] It's very basic. It's very basic. You know, you've just got to think, how do you get 10,000 mares or 5000 mares or in the Icelandic case, going through these blood farms? So what they do is where in South America you'd have the gauchos on horseback, whereas in Iceland you'd get these Icelanders in their four by fours corralling these horses with their dogs into these pens, basically. First of all, they're these holding pens, and then one by one, they're kind of whipped and beaten with wooden planks, etc., to get into the small restraint box, basically. In this restraint box, there's a strap that's put around its back. There's a rope to yank the horse's neck upward, so in quite an unnatural position. Then a half inch cannula is stuck into the neck of the horse, and then five liters of blood is then extracted from that horse. You can actually see on our footage the tubes going from the neck into these metal cans, which is where they're deposited. The horses are absolutely frightened. You know, they can see the fear in their eyes, you can see the fear in their nostrils. They're trying to get out of the pens. Some occasions you can see them physically jumping or trying to jump out of these pens. It's a clearly distressing process, a world away from what the pharmaceutical company tried to portray it as. They tried to portray it as this very calm process, but it's not like that and we've got absolute evidence from all our hidden camera footage that it's a completely different scenario.
Elizabeth: [00:15:13] Well, I think one of the things that disturbed me the most was when you watched the horse come out of the box and it looked like it was about to fall over. It's so exhausted and depleted and like, literally, it looks like it's drugged.
Gem: [00:15:27] I mean, there's two examples. There's two things that happen when they come out of the box. One case, it's exactly like that. Think about it. You know, they just had five liters of blood taken out of them. They're going to be affected by that. But in other cases, you see the horses absolutely bolt out of there because they don't want to be there, you know? So there's a question on one hand, they might be totally drugged. On one hand, they might have total fear that, you know, they don't want to be that box. And of course, the next week, in another week, the whole process is repeated. So for every week, for ten weeks, these horses will have to endure the same process now. You can see each time they go back, you know, they're going to be much more fearful of the process.
Elizabeth: [00:16:10] Is it like in the Premarin industry, where the foals are taken right away, like from the mothers?
Gem: [00:16:17] Well, you can actually see some of the foals are with the mothers. There's obviously a distress when they can see their mother is having this done. You know, they're crying out to each other.
Elizabeth: [00:16:25] So there's how many farms in Iceland?
Gem: [00:16:28] In Iceland, there's 119 blood farms.
Elizabeth: [00:16:32] But how do you guys figure that out? Are they hidden?
Gem: [00:16:34] Well, it's really interesting. We were given that information before by the organization who'd done the research. The beauty with Google Maps is nowadays you can actually identify these farms on Google Maps. Basically these are farms, as you say, they're very basic shacks, but you can actually see them on Google Earth. The geography of Iceland. It's wild. It's rugged. There's no buildings about. So it has a whole different set of challenges to this investigation. Whereas in Argentina we had to get past CCTV cameras and guards, etc. and those challenges. This one was actually trying to do the investigation without being seen.
Elizabeth: [00:17:20] How did you get the cameras on?
Gem: [00:17:22] So we identified from the research in and I've talked to you previously about investigations is research research research is trying to identify the farms that we could think that we can get access to without being seen. So we had a team of three here and I like to call them our super team because these are great investigators. I don't call them a super team, actually, one of our clients called them the super team because they just get amazing results. These are animal rights activists who've been trained by the military. So, you know, they've been on these military courses on covert surveillance of how to not be seen.
Elizabeth: [00:18:01] That's so awesome.
Gem: [00:18:02] So they'll be dropped off in a car three or four miles away from these farms, and then they'll traverse and it'll take three or 4 hours to traverse gullies, mountains. There's not a lot of tree cover in Iceland because there are no trees. They’ll go past the occasional house and they'll have thermal imaging cameras to see if anybody's looking out for them or see if there's anybody on the premises. Then they'll they'll get to the farms and each farm we tried I put in three cameras, you know, in different locations because you never quite sure when you've got these static cameras, you know, you've got to put these cameras in and then leave them for for 24 hours, 48 hours, and leave them running. So we placed them on separate or we try to conceal them and we did conceal them on these various structures, on the restraint boxes to try and get the right angles. Some of it is hit and miss. So we'd go back the next day and try and change the angle and we hadn't quite got it.
Elizabeth: [00:19:06] But even that's a lot to have to go back and change an angle when it's so hard to get there in the first place.
Gem: [00:19:12] And also you've got to go every 24 hours, 48 hours, you've got to go and change the cars and change the batteries. One of the challenges with this project is we knew an extraction generally happened every week, but we didn't know which day it was. So a lot of it is trial and error. You know, it's actually we've got to put the cameras out and then come back and retrieve it. I remember one of the clients said, oh, can you just go and change the camera around and just put it somewhere else in a different place? We're just saying it's not just a question of just driving up to something. You know, we have to explain the whole process. It's like it takes a whole 6, 7 hours to actually get into one of these farms and then move another. You could quickly just drive there, but.
Elizabeth: [00:19:57] Right, you can't.
Gem: [00:19:58] We can't because if you've seen and if the industry sees you, that's the end of the investigation. Because not only do you get caught, they'll be looking out for these cameras and each blood farm they'll do a thorough recce or a thorough investigation, a look out for these cameras. So our job really as investigators is not to be seen.
Elizabeth: [00:20:18] And so is it all that night?
Gem: [00:20:19] Yeah. You're literally dropped off at night and you've got these thermal imaging cameras. So you can see if there's anybody out there. You know, because they've had this kind of military training type thing. So it's kind of like a military operation, if I'm honest.
Elizabeth: [00:20:33] It is. It's intense. It's very intense.
Gem: [00:20:35] You kind of need to do that because. You're not going to get the footage any other way. You have to use these hidden cameras because you're not going to be able to go and witness the activity on a normal day. What we try to do is capture the reality of what's going on. We don't try to fake anything we showed. What we've shown is, as you saw, there's beatings, you've seen dogs biting at ankles of the horses. You know, you've seen iron bars, you've seen rubber rods, to actually corral those horses into things. It was shocking. It was, you know, really shocking.
Elizabeth: [00:21:11] Yeah, it is really shocking. How many farms did you investigate?
Gem: [00:21:15] We went to get footage from three or four farms.
Elizabeth: [00:21:18] Okay. So it's kind of the same story in every farm.
Gem: [00:21:20] Yeah, it's like a lot of things in factory farming. We always try to investigate at least three because, you know, to show it's not just a bad egg, you know, it's just not an isolated instance. But the reality is there's no way to do it in such a calm way. There is in our experience what we've seen, there's no real humane way to do it.
Elizabeth: [00:21:44] Well, to get a semi wild horse to go into a creepy little box, there's no way and in that kind of time, there's no way to do it without beating it.
Gem: [00:21:52] Yeah and I mean, the crazy thing is there's vets there as well. So it's not just the workers there who kind of turned a blind eye to what was going on because they're part of the industry.
Elizabeth: [00:22:04] So then what? So how long does this take to do all these? Like from when you start, like how much time in Iceland?
Gem: [00:22:10] So we just had a very short period. I mean, just under two weeks, basically we were there.
Elizabeth: [00:22:15] Wow, this was quick.
Gem: [00:22:16] Yeah. So most of our investigations are 2 to 3 weeks, partly because it's just so tiring and you just can't and you just can't continue working, you know, 24 hours a day for a longer period than 2 to 3 weeks, because we find our investigators go crazy and get lack of sleep and that's when mistakes happen. So we try to limit it to a shorter period.
Elizabeth: [00:22:39] So then you have all this footage and then what happens?
Gem: [00:22:43] This is the great thing about Tracks is we are a very small cog in this whole business. Basically we specialize in getting the footage and when we pass it over to the organizations that we worked with and we kind of try and work with organizations that have impact, who can do stuff and it's not just a specific media hit, you know, they actually have a strategy for the footage that we use, that we get because there's nothing worse than busting a gut, getting a great footage, and then it's just sitting on a shelf. Kind of being there. So demoralizing. So credit to this organization, they had a fabulous strategy of getting this footage out. First of all, they partnered with 12 other NGOs to actually coordinate putting the footage out in various countries. But firstly, they decided to put it out in Iceland. So they worked with an Icelandic lawyer who literally went through the Animal Welfare Act and looked at all the violations that we documented. They went with a German veterinarian who forensically went through all the footage and I’m talking forensically and to actually check what animal welfare signs of distress there were, that we are filming in. Because sometimes when you get this footage, I watched it back and you know I'm not a horse expert. I don't know if I can spot exact signs of when horses are suffering, etc. You know, obviously the overt stuff of hitting and beating, I can see. But they forensically went through the footage and then identified problems with it.
Elizabeth: [00:24:35] Problems with what was happening to the horses?
Gem: [00:24:37] Exactly. Well, and yeah, the stressful nature of the horse, the stressful nature of the extraction business, as opposed to just the massive beatings, as it were. Then it was released. First of all, it was released in Iceland. It really was a media viral story because Icelanders hadn't even heard about this. It was a shock to the majority of Icelanders, so it kind of dominated the national news for about a week. It went on current affairs programs where they have discussion programs about it and an hour long discussion program about the blood horse's industry.
Elizabeth: [00:25:17] What were people saying?
Gem: [00:25:17] Wow. Well, people didn't know. What was really interesting is people say occasionally we're doing investigations, that's not the reality of it. That's kind of fake. But I think they would share horror from it because you couldn't really dispute the footage because it wasn't just from one place, it was actually everyone was complicit in it. Yeah, it kind of had an amazing impact. It was like, wow, first of all, get the media impact. Then it was in the national papers, it was on television. But much more interestingly, just a few weeks afterwards, you know, legislators got involved because they were working with lawyers, etc., and it was discussed in parliament. Then a bill was submitted to the Icelandic parliament asking for a ban on blood collections on these farms. This bill is now currently being assessed by the parliamentary committee. At the same time, there's other working parties in Iceland. There's a working committee established by the Ministry of Agriculture that is asking for submissions from various interested parties about the blood horses industry, and that's going to be announced in June, some of their findings, etc.. So it's not just the media here, it's the parliament in Iceland that is discussing this. Actually for the first time, first time being aware of it and looking at alternatives to the blood horses.
Elizabeth: [00:26:38] That's incredible.
Gem: [00:26:39] It's absolutely incredible. I think there were only about 130 submissions to this public survey about people talking and organizations talking about it. So we have the Icelandic Horse Association, which condemned the mistreatment. I've got a quote here, condemning the practices of mistreatment of mares on blood farms. We welcome the stop of import and domestic production of PMSG and support any action taken by the Icelandic authorities to stop the procedure in Iceland completely. So obviously people are going to be upset about this. The horse industry or the Confederation of Horse people in Iceland are going to be freaked out about this because you rightly say Iceland is known for horses.
Elizabeth: [00:27:25] And you said there's only 70,000 horses in Iceland and there's 5000 that are being used for their blood.
Gem: [00:27:31] What's interesting is that in the last ten years, this industry has tripled in Iceland partly because of pressures from the people not using South American blood forces, but they are actually seeing it as a new income. So hopefully we're trying to nip this expansion in the bud and not only nip it in the bud, but actually get it stopped.
Elizabeth: [00:27:53] So who's making all the money off of this?
Gem: [00:27:56] Money goes to the blood farmers, for want of a better word. You know, because they can get €450 from the blood of a horse, whereas if they were previously selling foals, etc., they'd get €100. So they're seeing they can make more money by extracting PMSG. There's a backlash, I mean, this is the great thing about this investigation. It created a backlash. People are saying, well, we don't want to be associated with this, because it might be good for those specific farmers, but it's not going to be good for Iceland as a whole.
Elizabeth: [00:28:33] And it's only a hundred farmers, like there's 100 farms.
Gem: [00:28:35] It's 100 farms. So I'm not sure exactly if I'm honest, I'm not sure how many.
Elizabeth: [00:28:40] Well work at 100 farms, but I can't imagine aside from that group, anyone is for this. Right?
Gem: [00:28:47] Well, interestingly, in the submissions, I mean, there's lots of veterinarians, lots of groups, there's lots of organizations who are against it. The only ones that seem to be from it were Spanish pig producers because they use the PMSG. So in the submissions, they say we can't survive without this PMSG and we can't survive without these blood horses. So the investigation went viral, went massive in Iceland, but it was also released two months later in Switzerland, which is the home of one of this organization's, Zurich. Again, it went quite a big story in Switzerland, you know, because they use a lot of MSG for the farming industry and there was again national discussions on TV.
Elizabeth: [00:29:43] Yeah.
Gem: [00:29:44] On one of these programs, the Swiss Pig Breeders Association announced they would stop using PMSG actually on the show. The quote is, we don't want to be associated with these pictures of blood farms. So that was astounding because they didn't want to wait for a band to happen. They actually thought, let's get out of this business because there's no there's no future in this business. If people are going to be thinking pigs are associated with the footage that we obtained, they don't want to be part of.
Elizabeth: [00:30:20] Which is absolutely awesome. Also really a little bit ironic since you're killing one animal, but it's still incredible.
Gem: [00:30:29] We've had this discussion at Tracks. We were saying we were trying to work out the hierarchy involved. We were actually saying, isn't it great news? But don't they see the irony of them using factory farming, etc.?
Elizabeth: [00:30:41] But it's still one big battle.
Gem: [00:30:43] It's a battle won because it shows there's one European country that actually doesn't have to be using this PMSG. I'll tell you another reason, there's 36 synthetic alternatives to PMSG. So there is an option. There is another way so that it doesn't have to use the blood of horses.
Elizabeth: [00:31:04] So why aren't they using the synthetics?
Gem: [00:31:07] That it's again, with most things, it's a habit. This is for the last 40 years. This is how we've used PMSG. It has to come from the pregnant mares, but there are synthetic alternatives and there is traction. After our investigation, the European Parliament voted to ban the import of PMSG into Europe. Now it's quite strange the European Parliament because there's another step which means the Commission has actually got to act upon what the parliamentarians wish, but it's a start. It's a start. So it hasn't been effectively banned. But the process is there that MEPs in Europe realize that this is a problem.
Elizabeth: [00:31:47] And it's used in the U.S. too?
Gem: [00:31:49] It's used in the US, yeah. The other crazy thing, I keep thinking about this, the new crazy things and how the impact is of these types of investigations. Just last month, the two NGOs that we worked with actually went and had a petition, lodged a complaint to the European Free Trade Agreement, saying these blood farms actually violate the European Treaty because they see these blood tests as animal experiments and you shouldn't be carrying out animal experiments if there are alternatives.
Elizabeth: [00:32:20] That is cool.
Gem: [00:32:21] So they've lodged a complaint and that's very early days, but it's actually acknowledging that there are alternatives. Ultimately what this is, it’s an animal experiment, right? If I'm honest, I only learnt about that last week, you know, so that's news. I don't know about it, but it just shows you how one little investigation that we spent two weeks on, now has blossomed and or how many different impacts it can have. So it's got a major impact. It's got a legislative impact. It's got an Icelandic impact, it's got a European impact. Hopefully it will spread its wings out to the US as well.
Elizabeth: [00:32:58] Well, and hopefully it's kind of the beginning of the end of this industry.
Gem: [00:33:01] I think what really heartened me was when the Swiss Pig Breeders Association came out with that statement, because they've kind of realized that there is an alternative, and it might cost a bit of money to start off with or it might mean they've got to change their ways to start off with. But, you know, they'll have to adapt. People have adapted with welfare changes.
Elizabeth: [00:33:24] Also and this is a thing someone told me this a long time ago, I was doing an interview and we were talking about animal testing for like laundry detergent and and the old school brands that all still test in the U.S. a lot of things that are invented now, they don't test. This is like the same thing you're saying about habit, it's so expensive to stop testing and do it a different way, even though ultimately it's way cheaper. Nobody wants to change.
Gem: [00:33:49] Yeah, it's a habit. If you've been using a practice for the last 40 years, you have to be pushed to change sometimes. Legislation or public demand, you know, will push you. Our aim as investigators is to push those investigators and push the public to actually create that change.
Elizabeth: [00:34:11] Nobody knows about this. No one's ever heard of this.
Gem: [00:34:14] Well, I mean, this is the crazy thing about it, you know? I mean, 35 years of doing animal protection investigations. I didn't know this existed. It wasn't even a thing, you know, because it sounds too crazy to actually believe, isn't it, really, that you'd get blood from pregnant horses and then help productivity in pigs? How does that work? How is that even? Yeah, it's just it's beyond words, really. There must be so many other things that we need to delve into.
Elizabeth: [00:34:47] Talk about the hormones that people are ingesting on top of all those others. Right, then people are eating those hormones from the pregnant horse.
Gem: [00:34:57] Once you start messing with nature, you really don't know what's going to be happening. You know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I just know that I don't want to be eating. I don't eat meat. But if I did eat meat, would I really want to be meat with pregnant mare hormones in it?
Elizabeth: [00:35:13] No, no. Well, did you guys do investigations on Premarin and the PMU industry ever? Which is pregnant mare urine and it's a horrible, horrible industry where women were taking Premarin for menopause like a hormone supplement and women started getting cancer left and right from it, which not shocking. They're ingesting another animal's hormones. Some people still take it, but it's very little now because of all the cancer.
Gem: [00:35:39] I remember seeing those investigations and hearing about that. I think Peta did a lot of stuff in the eighties and nineties about it. It’s just messing…
Elizabeth: [00:35:51] You're messing with nature.
Gem: [00:35:51] It's messing with nature. Once you start messing with nature. Nature has a nasty habit of biting you.
Elizabeth: [00:35:59] Have you had any other investigations like that you didn't even know the industry existed or something that you just like kind of surprised you this much?
Gem: [00:36:06] I think this investigation into blood horses is the one I knew probably very little about or nothing about. What we haven't even talked about here is we've just recently done an investigation in Europe which hasn't been released yet into pig production. So this is kind of the whole industry. So we've talked about the horses, but then it goes to the pig production. The pig production isn't great, it's not a great advert. It's a horrific part of factory farming and we just witnessed this at first hand and it's shocking. You've got these pregnant pigs confined in gestation crates, farrowing crates.
Elizabeth: [00:36:46] For people who don't know, will you explain what a gestation crate is?
Gem: [00:36:50] So you've got a pregnant pig and it gives birth in a metal cage, basically, you know, where they can't turn round. They're confined there for a number of months and then they give birth to a whole range of piglets. I mean, I was thinking of the footage that we've got and they're crushed within these crates. A lot of these animals have got horrific sores, injuries. They're just filthy environments. So this is just part of the factory farming business. So you've got these cages and well, you've got these crates. You also have something called sow stalls, which have been banned in a lot of Europe, but we also filmed, where before they go in these crates, these sows, they’re kept in these even smaller crates.
Elizabeth: [00:37:52] Really.
Gem: [00:37:53] This is prior to keeping birth, when they can't turn around and they're kept in there for over a month, there's literally no activity for these sows to do. So they just kept in confinement and, you know, pigs are intelligent creatures. They're supposedly as intelligent as a dog. You can see that when you go into one of these farms, they all come up to you. When you're right next to it, they'll try and nuzzle, they're inquisitive, they'll put their snouts up. They'll try and engage with you when you're trying to film something. Yeah, these aren't dumb creatures at all, you know, and we're keeping a stack of them in these factory farming conditions. We filmed pigs dying and literally dying in these farms and then seeing their bodies just dumped in a makeshift trench outside where they're being grown riddled with maggots.
Elizabeth: [00:38:51] So getting into factory farms in Europe, it's still a lot easier than in the U.S., I mean, in the sense of like getting thrown in jail.
Gem: [00:38:58] We were recently asked to do an investigation in Texas when they had the Stand Your Ground law, which we were looking into. So, once you get past the fact that you don't mind trespass, you didn't really want to get shot, did we? So we decided not to do that one. I think a lot of the US organizations are very, very risk averse as part of doing investigations from not risk averse to the investigators, but risk averse from being sued if they produce any of their material, or release any of the material. I mean how we did these investigations in Europe was via trespass and again, we don't damage anything. We enter via the dead of night as we tend to do most of our investigations with our thermal imaging cameras and also our infrared cameras, which can detect alarms, etc.. So we try and make sure we don't get seen and don't get caught doing these investigations.
Elizabeth: [00:39:56] Then Iceland, people are really against it. But I'm just trying to picture how this could work in the US, right? Getting people angry enough that there's tortured horses involved with their meat because that's kind of what's happening in Iceland.
Gem: [00:40:10] Absolutely. Yeah. Well, it's not happening in Iceland. It's happening across the world.
Elizabeth: [00:40:14] Yeah, for sure.
Gem: [00:40:16] Something that happens in Iceland or Argentina and Uruguay is affecting something that happens in the states in Europe. The whole big ag thing is worldwide.
Elizabeth: [00:40:28] And it's all connected.
Gem: [00:40:30] Unfortunately that's the reality of it. I'm surprised it's not such a big thing elsewhere. But, you know, it's made a massive thing in Iceland, which is really good because we can only hope that things change.
Elizabeth: [00:40:42] And they could change as soon as June. That's awesome.
Gem: [00:40:46] Yeah and things have changed.
Elizabeth: [00:40:47] Right already.
Gem: [00:40:48] We have changed because we know Switzerland is one of the major markets have stopped it. So an investigation has had an impact already and hopefully it will have a further impact. Hopefully the rest of Europe, which is part of another lobbying thing, will actually stop it. Then if Europe does it, there's no reason why the rest of the world.
Elizabeth: [00:41:08] It's awesome. Gem this is amazing. I love what you guys are doing and have been doing for decades and thank you for all of it.
Gem: [00:41:17] Well, thank you, Beth for inviting me.
Elizabeth: [00:41:19] Thank you so much.
Gem: [00:41:20] Thank you.
Elizabeth: [00:41:28] To learn more about Gem, to learn more about Tracks Investigations, and to learn more about vampire blood farms, go to our website Species Unite.com. We will have links to everything. We are on Facebook and Instagram, SpeciesUnite. If you have a spare minute and could do us a favor, please subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. If you'd like to support Species Unite, we'd greatly appreciate it. Go to our website, SpeciesUnite.com and click Donate. I'd like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santana Polky, Bethany Jones and Anna Connor, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day.
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