Inside Iceland’s horse blood farms

Ice­land is a nation of horse lovers. There is around one horse for every five peo­ple on the island just south of the Arc­tic Cir­cle. The colour­ful Ice­landic horse is famous for its small but stur­dy stature and unique gaits. The hors­es are high­ly-prized and pro­tect­ed and the gov­ern­ment has helped to pro­mote them inter­na­tion­al­ly – rid­ing them is a pop­u­lar activ­i­ty for tourists vis­it­ing the coun­try. But some peo­ple have found anoth­er way to make mon­ey from them.

Across Ice­land there are more than 100 blood farms oper­at­ing. The nation is one of the only coun­tries in the world that has such farms, along with Argenti­na and Uruguay. Every week, for up to eight weeks dur­ing the sum­mer, preg­nant semi-wild hors­es are brought into enclo­sures, where their heads are tied up with a rope and five litres of blood drained from their necks using a can­nu­la. It’s the equiv­a­lent of all the blood in an aver­age human body. 

The blood is bought by an Ice­landic phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny called Íste­ka, which process­es it to obtain a spe­cial hor­mone known as Preg­nant Mare Serum Gonadotrophin (PMSG). It is shipped around the world where it is inject­ed into fac­to­ry farm ani­mals to increase their fer­til­i­ty ― pro­duc­ing more off­spring for more meat. PMSG pro­duced in Ice­land is licensed and sold in the UK, Ire­land, the US, and through­out Europe, though most con­sumers remain unaware of its use in our food sup­ply chains.

Sab­ri­na Gurt­ner was the first per­son to set out in search of Ice­landic blood farms. Work­ing for a Ger­man char­i­ty called the Ani­mal Wel­fare Foun­da­tion, she stum­bled across the blood mares while research­ing the horse meat indus­try, ini­tial­ly in South Amer­i­ca, where PMSG is also pro­duced. ​“At the begin­ning, I could almost not believe it,” she says. ​“It’s just real­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble how you could exploit one ani­mal species to then exploit anoth­er… I was so shocked when I dis­cov­ered all this that I thought, we have to con­tin­ue investigating.”

The indus­try has been oper­at­ing in Ice­land for decades but has rapid­ly grown in recent years. The num­ber of blood mares in Ice­land has grown by 25% in the last five years, now num­ber­ing more than 5,000. The gov­ern­ment allows them to oper­ate and even car­ries out ran­dom inspec­tions of the farms ― but activists say Gurtner’s find­ings show that the inspec­tions are not enough. 

Dur­ing two trips to Ice­land in 2019 and 2021, Gurt­ner says she iden­ti­fied 40 blood farms and observed what she felt were ​“major ani­mal wel­fare prob­lems”. On one farm, farm­ers were ​“using aggres­sive dogs that attacked the hors­es and bit into their tails and legs,” Gurt­ner says. ​“We could see that they were also using sticks on the hors­es… and that they hit them on their heads.” 

Gurt­ner and her team were fol­lowed twice while attempt­ing to film the farms, by work­ers try­ing to pre­vent them. In spite of this they did man­age to obtain footage from three farms. It shows chaot­ic scenes of hors­es being hit with sticks and whips, strug­gling while tied up, and bit­ing at wood­en enclo­sures from stress.

When Gurtner’s video was pub­lished online, in Novem­ber 2021, many Ice­landers were furi­ous at how their beloved hors­es were shown to be treat­ed. Most had either not known about the farms or thought lit­tle about them until Gurtner’s video thrust the issue into the spot­light, divid­ing opin­ion. Intense debates emerged over the details of the prac­tice ― the treat­ment of the hors­es, the amount of blood tak­en. The gov­ern­ment launched a work­ing group to inves­ti­gate. An oppo­si­tion MP intro­duced a bill attempt­ing to ban the farms.

Frus­trat­ed that lit­tle progress was being made, some mem­bers of the pub­lic took it upon them­selves to do some­thing: In ear­ly 2022 an angry group of horse own­ers formed Ani­mal Wel­fare Ice­land (AWI) with the pur­pose of shut­ting down the farms. 

Meike Witt was the woman who came up with the idea. Witt works in the tourism indus­try by day and keeps eight hors­es, includ­ing two res­cued blood mare foals, along with oth­er ani­mals at her home in south­ern Iceland.

“When this video emerged, most Ice­landers were com­plete­ly shocked… I could­n’t sleep for two weeks,” Witt tells us.

She start­ed con­tact­ing oth­er peo­ple she saw pas­sion­ate­ly argu­ing against blood farms on equine Face­book groups and togeth­er they found­ed AWI. ​“We would stay up all night talk­ing until one or two o’clock on the phone, just exchang­ing infor­ma­tion,” Witt says. 

Now the team of five board mem­bers ― backed by hun­dreds of sup­port­ers ― spend their free time writ­ing arti­cles for news­pa­pers, spread­ing word on social media and lob­by­ing politi­cians. Witt even organ­ised a per­son­al meet­ing with the boss of Íste­ka. ​“They thought we were just two lit­tle pony girls… [But] I think we real­ly gave them a hard time,” she says. 

The group is made up of unpaid vol­un­teers, includ­ing a doc­tor, a lawyer and a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist. Some live in flats in the cap­i­tal Reyk­javik, oth­ers in sprawl­ing farm­land near the foot of vol­ca­noes, but they have become unlike­ly friends, meet­ing online from their dis­parate loca­tions every fort­night. ​“I [work] long evenings. Very long evenings until two o’clock at night,” Witt says. ​“Ask my fam­i­ly… It’s real­ly dif­fi­cult. It’s not healthy… But it’s much eas­i­er if you are a group.” She was always trou­bled by the treat­ment of ani­mals, she says. ​“The good thing now is I’m not on my own anymore.”

Ice­land already had a well-estab­lished ani­mal char­i­ty ― the Ani­mal Wel­fare Asso­ci­a­tion of Ice­land (DÍS) ― but AWI has dri­ven the cam­paign against the blood farms and the two groups have dif­fer­ent approach­es. Where­as DÍS is more cau­tious and tra­di­tion­al, Witt’s group is more loose­ly organ­ised, fast-mov­ing and ​“quite aggres­sive,” as she puts it.

A year ago Lin­da Karen Gun­nars­dót­tir took over as chair of DÍS with a desire to inject renewed ener­gy into the organ­i­sa­tion of 600 mem­bers. The Eng­lish teacher, who stud­ied equine sci­ence at uni­ver­si­ty and also has a horse, says her phone is con­stant­ly ring­ing with reports of ani­mal abuse. Like Witt, she ends up work­ing late into the night, after school closes.

Gun­nars­dót­tir wel­comes us to their small office and pulls out antique news­pa­pers pub­lished by the organ­i­sa­tion as far back as 1917. ​“Ours is a well estab­lished and respect­ed organ­i­sa­tion … with his­to­ry span­ning 110 years,” she tells us. Even so, it also relies on vol­un­teers ― there are no ani­mal wel­fare char­i­ties in Ice­land with any paid employees.

Since Gun­nars­dót­tir took over, DÍS has also been active on the blood farms issue, but their approach is more for­malised, with long board meet­ings and care­ful process­es to sign off state­ments and strate­gies. ​“I think in this kind of work you have to accept that you’re mov­ing real­ly slow­ly,” Gun­nars­dót­tir says. ​“But in the end, you’re going to move some­thing forward.”

DÍS’s long record comes with pres­tige, but also chal­lenges. Reyk­javik is small and due to a his­toric lease, DÍS is cur­rent­ly shar­ing an office block with Íste­ka, the Ice­landic phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal that runs the blood mare indus­try. Gun­nars­dót­tir won’t com­ment on this, how­ev­er, care­ful not to flare up tensions.

This is not so unusu­al in a coun­try of less than 400,000, where many peo­ple are care­ful about what they say in pub­lic. Ice­landic friends and local jour­nal­ists say there is often a reluc­tance to talk to the media and a fear of burn­ing bridges, since you’re like­ly to keep bump­ing into peo­ple ― mak­ing DIS’s for­mal and cau­tious approach more typ­i­cal than AWI’s unusu­al­ly con­fronta­tion­al tactics.

We take two trips to the south of the island where there are rumoured to be a clus­ter of blood farms. We trav­el down dirt tracks close to the Skó­gafoss and Sel­ja­lands­foss water­falls, pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions for Iceland’s annu­al 1.7 mil­lion tourists, offer­ing up the Insta­gram-wor­thy pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties the coun­try is famous for. One evening, we stay overnight in a large horse barn not far from Mount Hekla, one of Iceland’s most active vol­ca­noes. Shel­tered from the rain, we spend the evening by the fire with our activist host, dis­cussing his child­hood sum­mers spent on Ice­landic farms and the country’s incred­i­ble environment.

The weath­er out here is extreme ― on a par­tic­u­lar­ly windy day we are warned not to open both doors of the car at the same time, in case the wind rips them off. We dri­ve down dirt tracks and walk around des­o­late farms. Of the blood farms we find, one is oppo­site a small guest­house that adver­tis­es the sur­round­ing hors­es on its web­site. We speak to an elder­ly cou­ple liv­ing near anoth­er one. They tell us that peo­ple around there don’t talk about the blood busi­ness ― the top­ic is too sen­si­tive. They them­selves are strong­ly opposed to it, though they note that many of the farm­ers are under finan­cial pres­sure and that the con­di­tions on the farms vary.

We spot groups of hors­es band­ed togeth­er near sus­pect­ed blood farms ― some run away as they see us com­ing. Local jour­nal­ists have advised us to look for white hors­es, as you can more eas­i­ly see marks on their necks from repeat­ed blood draw­ing. We walk up to one of the wood­en struc­tures used for blood tak­ing. The creepy enclo­sure has a noosed rope hang­ing from it, where hors­es have been tied up by their heads. Next to the struc­ture – which is cov­ered with large bite marks, evi­dence of stressed hors­es – we see a whip and bro­ken horse­shoe. From the car, our guides watch ner­vous­ly ― they know that activists aren’t welcome.

Even if you find your­self in the right place at the right time, it’s hard to see the kind of scenes Gurt­ner was able to wit­ness two years ago. Since then, accord­ing to activists, those involved in the blood mare busi­ness have tak­en more mea­sures to hide it from view, with much of the blood­let­ting now hid­den away in ware­hous­es or moved fur­ther from the road.

Íste­ka, says that the scenes cap­tured by Gurt­ner and her col­leagues are not stan­dard prac­tice and that it ter­mi­nat­ed con­tracts with the two farms involved after review­ing the footage. It also says that improve­ments have been made since then, includ­ing increased edu­ca­tion of farm­ers and bet­ter mon­i­tor­ing. How­ev­er, they declined our request to vis­it a farm, telling us that ​“All man­u­fac­tur­ing and col­lec­tion facil­i­ties are closed to out­siders as [a] pro­tec­tive mea­sure for hors­es and farm­ers.”

Asked about what we saw, Íste­ka said that bite marks do not nec­es­sar­i­ly indi­cate stress, as ​“Hors­es are known to gnaw untreat­ed wood irre­spec­tive of stress.” They said that ​“whips or oth­er kinds of tools for beat­ing are a rare occur­rence in blood col­lec­tion and we do not tol­er­ate beat­ings of hors­es used in the process.” If farm­ers are mov­ing col­lec­tion facil­i­ties away from the road, they added, it might be due to the intru­sion of ​“unau­tho­rised per­sons” around facil­i­ties, which has caused dis­tress to hors­es and work­ers. 

Blood farm­ers are reluc­tant to speak to the media but we did man­age to speak to one who told us she was ​“shocked” by some of the things she saw in Gurtner’s video, which didn’t reflect cor­rect pro­ce­dure. At the same time, she felt that some parts of the footage were framed mis­lead­ing­ly and that it wasn’t a ​“fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion” of the indus­try, which she said was sub­ject to fre­quent wel­fare checks. In a sub­mis­sion to the Ice­landic par­lia­ment, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the blood farm­ers described them­selves as ​“good farm­ers and ani­mal lovers”.

Despite the activists’ efforts, ani­mal wel­fare issues have proven dif­fi­cult to tack­le for Iceland’s frag­ile coali­tion gov­ern­ment, espe­cial­ly since the horse blood indus­try brings in around £11 mil­lion annu­al­ly in export rev­enue for Íste­ka, as well as addi­tion­al income for the country’s strug­gling farmers.

But change may ulti­mate­ly come from out­side forces. Last year, 17 NGOs includ­ing Gurtner’s and Witt’s organ­i­sa­tions ― but not DÍS, which Gun­nars­dót­tir was not yet run­ning ― lodged a com­plaint with the EFTA Sur­veil­lance Author­i­ty, the body respon­si­ble for ensur­ing that coun­tries in the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Area, includ­ing Ice­land, com­ply with EU rules.

The NGOs argued that Ice­land was in breach of ani­mal wel­fare reg­u­la­tions. The Sur­veil­lance Author­i­ty agreed, issu­ing Ice­land with a warn­ing that gave them two months to explain themselves.

For a while, there was silence from the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment. But in Sep­tem­ber, two months past the dead­line, they final­ly agreed to apply the ani­mal wel­fare reg­u­la­tions to the blood farms. That means they will now have to under­take a series of assess­ments to jus­ti­fy the farms, demon­strat­ing, for exam­ple, that the suf­fer­ing of the ani­mals is pro­por­tion­ate to the need for the drugs and that there is no viable alter­na­tive. Activists think they’ll strug­gle to show that, espe­cial­ly since there are sev­er­al drugs that can be pro­duced syn­thet­i­cal­ly that have a sim­i­lar, though not iden­ti­cal, effect to PMSG.

“It will be very dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy that PMSG is need­ed,” says Gurt­ner, who is prepar­ing to release anoth­er video in the hopes that it will influ­ence the deci­sion. ​“Accord­ing to the… leg­is­la­tion, [they] have to prove that there are no alter­na­tives not involv­ing the use of ani­mals. And that is very dif­fi­cult.”

Íste­ka has a dif­fer­ent take. They claim that PMSG is resource- and ener­gy-sav­ing for farm­ers, and that it there­fore ​“pos­i­tive­ly affects the farmer and ulti­mate­ly the envi­ron­ment for us all.” They con­clud­ed, ​“We are extreme­ly proud of our con­tri­bu­tion to the plan­et.”

For oth­er Ice­landers, Ísteka’s prac­tices are a source of shame, not pride. There are many who cel­e­brat­ed the announce­ment of the appli­ca­tion of ani­mal wel­fare reg­u­la­tions to the blood farms. ​“This might be the begin­ning of the end!” Witt wrote to us excit­ed­ly when the news broke. ​“They will try to find a way out… so we are watch­ing very close­ly,” she added with a note of cau­tion. But ​“I hope that this is it… [that] they are allowed to fin­ish [the blood tak­ing] this year, in ear­ly Octo­ber, and then it is over. HOPEFULLY!”

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