12/04/2021

Almost 2000 signatures in 48 hours to ask Minister Speranza to block the authorisation.

The case of Fixplan - the drug produced with the blood of tortured pregnant mares and used in intensive farming for the production of meat - arrived in Parliament with bipartisan Written Questions presented, among others, by Hon. Michela Vittoria Brambilla (Forza Italia), Hon. Patrizia Prestipino (PD) and Hon. Manfredi Potente (Lega Nord), while that petition launched by IHP on the Change.org platform to ask the Italian Minister of Health to block the distribution of the drug collected almost 2000 signatures in just 48 hours.

‘Our heartfelt thanks go to the honourable members of parliament who have taken our request to the highest institutional level’, says the President of IHP Sonny Richichi. ‘We are particularly pleased that the Written Questions are bipartisan: this means that the welfare of animals and the refusal of suffering are important irrespective of any political affiliation.

‘My heartfelt thanks also go to all the people who, in the space of a few hours, signed our petition addressed to Minister Speranza to ask him to block the distribution of Fixplan’, continues Richichi, who ‘appeals to all those who trust in our battle: keep signing to give us even more strength’.

Fixplan is a drug produced using the blood of pregnant mares (within 120 days of conception) from which the active principle Equine Serum Gonadotropin (PMSG) is extracted.Various investigations conducted since 2015 by the Animal Welfare Foundation, have documented the suffering inflicted on mares from which as many as 10 litres of blood are taken per week. If they become weak or sick they receive no treatment. Videos shot undercover confirm constant abuse: they are also beaten with sticks and hit with iron hooks. Added to this is the agony of the foals because the mares are made to abort (their gestation normally lasts about 330 days): the foals die suffering.

‘This drug is used in the intensive breeding of pigs, cattle and sheep to make the ‘production’ of animals to be slaughtered faster and more efficient’, adds the President of IHP. Signing the petition is important as Syntex, the Argentine company that produces Fixplan, has asked Italy for authorization to distribute the drug in our country with the help of a German company acting as an applicant’.

(photo: © Animal Welfare Foundation)

PETITION: No to Fixplan: stop horse abuse

VIDEO: the Syntex blood farms

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