The Ponease Scam
I came across this product over the summer, after a fellow equestrian sent me a blog from Horse Gurl.
The blog is honestly popcorn worthy and I highly recommend you read it in its entirety, (you can do so here) but I will put a condensed summary below.
What is Ponease?
Ponease is an equine supplement aimed at horse owners looking to help their horses with gastric or ulcer issues. It has gained popularity for its rave reviews on social media and facebook groups.
Any horse person reading this, should raise massive red flags from the description alone.
The Horse Gurl Blog highlights
- Jemima discovered Ponease in 2023 via a FB group with 30k members run by Lorraine Hughes - an independent equine nutritionist doing a PhD with Hartpury University.
- She went on to set herself up as a supplier for Ponease in Australia and completed all the documentation to get it into the country.
- Lorraine had informed Jemima that there was a unpublished study conducted between 2018 - 2020 showing all horses had reduced or cleared ulcers after 6 weeks on Ponease, but couldn't divulge any further data/information.
- The shipment of Ponease arrived but the PDF with the label - to comply with regulations- had been doctored. Messaging requirements from legal representatives was missing and ingredients had been deleted from this as well. Due to this she removed the product from her site.
- Earlier Ponease asked she pay a commission to Lorraine, as it was due to her independent advice and information about the study is why Jemima ordered the product.
- She paid Lorraine her commission via paypal, after receiving a message from Lorraine with the paypal address to send to- which was screen grabbed in the blog.
- After payment was made, a few days later Lorraine denied any commercial association with Ponease and Jemima put up a sign on her site to say she would no longer sell Ponease due to ethical and legal reasons.
- In the Facebook group, Lorraine and other accounts began calling Jemima a liar and troublemaker, so she began digging into their profiles.
- The fake profiles : Edwards Stephen (admin of Ponease fan club), Sarah Hughes and Channel Louise.
- Edwards Stephen had on his profile that he was a vet, equine scientist and worked for the Kentucky Equine Center. Jemima provided an email that there was no Edwards Stephen that worked for KER.
- Sarah Hughes was outed later on for her photos been lifted from a Russian dating website.
- Who owners Ponease? Samantha Jane Kelly
- Jemima expected threating correspondence from Ponease as they had offered her 500 dollars previously to be quiet.
- Jemima contacted Lorraine to get her side of the story, but she ignored her and made an announcement that Jemima was perusing a hate campaign against her.
- Hartpury wouldn't comment on the situation after Jemima contacted them.
- The study : after managing to find the infamous study between 2018 - 2020, which was on a suppliers website, it disappeared shortly after she had found it.
- The document was not written like a scientific study, no control, no dosage rates, no frequency, no materials and methods, it was very poorly conducted.
- The authors: Bruce Steele - passed away in 2021 and wasn't a practiced vet for 10 years prior. Dr James Murphy - unable to find any registered vet with that name in the ROI, NI or UK.
- All the stables mentioned to have been used for the horses, couldn't be found.
- The entire study was made up
- The equine center tested Ponease for NOPS (Naturally Occuring Prohibited Substances) in January 2024. The equine center advises that every batch of product be NOPS tested (though there is no evidence there has been since January). The equine center also said in an email to Jemima that they never say they "recommend or approve" a product, and have to contact businesses to remove this wording - Ponease still have that this on their website.
- The FEI made contact with Jemima to ask about the brand as they need to follow up on any product that says they are "FEI Compliant" when they are not. Many of the Ponease supplier websites still say the product is FEI Compliant.
Clare MacLeod - Independent nutritionist
Clare provided a poor review of the product on Facebook and there were many comments made under her review. All these comments were "positive" under the review and they were all made by fake profiles. Clare said in her post "I found out that ALL the positive comments on my (negative, due to illegal marketing) review of the supplement Ponease were from FAKE profiles...Each and every positive comment from a number of 'different' people was from the actual company!!!" You can find her full post here
Department of Agriculture
I was in my local feed store this week and got chatting to the guy behind the counter. He said that they got a new supplement from Northern Ireland that they couldn't keep on the shelves.
My back went up immediately and I asked..."is that Ponease?"
Oh yes it was.
He said the Department of Agriculture was in to tell them to stop selling it. He unfortunately didn't say why, but that is quite something for the Dept of Ag to come calling.
Later that day I received a message from a follower on Instagram, that another well known horse shop also had a visit from the Dept. of Ag, telling them to stop selling it too.
Long story short, stay far away from Ponease.
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