The Ponease Scam Update (Part 2)
Ponease is sold as a supplement for horses to help them with gastric ulcers, and has been getting rave reviews. But once you start looking into the business and the product itself, there seems to be issues cropping up. If you haven't read my first post on the Ponease topic you can do so here.
The Story Continues
After my previous post, in which I found out that the Ponease supplement was being pulled from Irish stores, I was very curious to know why. So I contacted my local shop to ask. They said "you need to contact the manufacturers regarding their product withdrawal from Rep Irl stockists". So that's what I did.
I posed the same question directly to Ponease, asking why the Dept of Agriculture was telling them to withdraw the product. Their response was:
"Ponease is not currently available in stories in the Republic of Ireland due an issue with licensing. As the product is manufactured in the NI, there is a separate license needed to sell in shops in Ireland. There is no issue with the product itself, just some paperwork. We are hoping to be back in stories very soon in the Republic of Ireland".
Naturally I was not expecting them to give me a genuine answer, but I thought I would ask anyway. But clearly there is a issue and that was a fluff answer to get me to go away.
So I contacted the Dept of Agriculture directly to see what was up with Ponease, below is what I get back from them:
"In response to your query below, please note that Ponease is not a registered feed business operator in the Republic Of Ireland and therefore the products could not be placed on the market here"
So this got me thinking, if Ponease are not a registered feed operator in the Republic of Ireland, I wonder are they registered in N.I. After a swift online search you can find the "List of NI approved feed business operator premises establishments" online here download the excel file and search for Ponease.
Low and behold....
I also tried variations of the spelling of Ponease along with the owners name Samantha Jane Kelly and the listed address for Ponease, nope...nothing.
Nature of Business
Seeing as I couldn't find Ponease as a manufacturer for Northern Ireland and we know it's not registered for ROI, I looked up the company information, readily available online.
Ponease nature of business is down as "Veterinary Activities". Straight away this raises a red flag for me, as there is nothing about feed or feed manufacturing. So I looked up a few more well known equine supplement companies to see what their nature of business was.
Science Supplements: Manufacture of prepared pet foods
Equine Products UK: Manufacture of prepared feeds for farm animals
Feedmark: Manufacture of prepared feeds for farm animals
From this you can see a trend with how the description is worded.
Cross Boarder Investigation
I received a message from a fellow equine Instagram account recently to say the DAFM feed (Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine) has investigated Ponease previously due to the company not being registered to manufacture feed (cementing my suspicions). It also said that there is a cross boarder investigation going on, as they are working with DAERA (Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs) in Northern Ireland in relation to this. It was also mentioned that there is no scientific support for the product, and best to stay away from it.
So that's all for now, should there be any further update you will find it here!
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