The wackjobs at PETA have asked Ben & Jerry’s ice cream founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield to stop using cow’s milk in their ice cream, and start using human breast milk instead.
Is it just me, or does the thought of eating ice cream made from human breast milk make your stomach churn?
Here’s the press release:
This morning, PETA dispatched a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of ice cream icon Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc., urging them to replace the cow’s milk in their products with human breast milk. PETA’s request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow’s milk in the food he serves. PETA points out to Cohen and Greenfield that such a move on their part would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health at the same time.
“The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn’t make sense,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Everyone knows that ‘the breast is best,’ so Ben & Jerry’s could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk.”
So, basically, we need to stop making cows produce milk for dairy products and start making humans do it instead. Right? Maybe I’m ignorant here, but I don’t think you can run to a breast milk factory where women willingly line up to pump their breast milk into bottles for mass consumption. I mean, where does PETA suggest we get this breast milk from? Again, maybe I’m just ignorant here. But PETA’s complaining that cows are being forcefully impregnated in order to get their milk, and if we were to stop doing that and start using breast milk… wouldn’t we technically need to start doing the same thing to women? How else would they be getting the mass quantities of breast milk to use for their ice cream? What are they suggesting, that we open human breast milk factories? Yeah, that’s a great idea. Where’s the outrage from NOW and the feminists? Oh yeah, it doesn’t involve abortion, so it’s not anti-woman. Whoops, my mistake.
Anyway…
As usual, PETA wants humans to suffer instead of animals. Let’s keep the cows from suffering… human suffering, though, no problem!
PETA does not seem to be able to grasp the concept that humans are different than animals. There is a vast difference between milking a cow and milking a woman. It’s sad, albeit not surprising, that PETA can’t see that.
Of course, maybe their brains have just shrunk from their lack of meat. I still say it would explain a lot.
And you know, if the ethics of using human breast milk weren’t in question, I still wouldn’t want to do that. I’d never eat Ben & Jerry’s again. I’m sorry, but I just find the idea of consuming human breast milk gross.
Hat Tip: Instapundit
tasteslikechicken says: This is probably one of PETA’s more effective campaigns. They provoke disgust with the idea of consuming human breast milk icecream, and associate this with the implied idea that cows are unwilling participants in the dairy industry. It is a bit less vulgar than their usual approach, though.
Right about now, if the NRA issued and official press release deriding California’s ten-shot capacity limit (richly deserving of derision, IMO) McCain would have been ambushed, twenty times in a single week, with questions about whether he agreed. We already know how Matt Damon feels about whether Sarah Palin thinks there were dinosaurs four thousand years ago.
In a sane universe, I think The Chosen One would be getting at least a question or two about PETA and ice cream. *I* certainly would like to know what his answer would be. It’s not a trivial issue. Obama’s a front-runner because he has a talent his slobbering fans don’t want to discuss in detail, beyond mentioning over and over again that he has the talent — and the talent he has, is making mainstream things look cock-eyed, and vice-versa. So yes. We laugh today, but a year from now you may very well be scanning your frozen dairy food case for a “Made With Old Fashioned Cow Milk” label, and failing to find it, dropping the ice cream from your shopping list for that night, in abject disgust. In an America run by Obama, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.
well, at least it's cleaner than prostitution, amirite? says: Honestly, I’m not for those… erm, people, at PETA, as I’m a regular meat-eater myself, but human milk is honestly the best choice for -human- consumption. Not only is cow milk overloaded with excessive minerals (like potassium) and etc. that we don’t need and simply pass through, but both providing and consuming human milk has, in -initial- experiments from 2008 (further testing required to make absolutely certain), caused APOPTOSIS(read: programmed cell death) in cancer cells (cell death+cancer cells = no cancer)… and also has a whole host of other things that can only improve human health (it increases intelligence too, apparently. considering the state of America, that’s always good). And while humans may indeed be, on some level, specifically a mental one, different from animals, they are, on the most basic… and some not so basic levels, very much the same. (You are welcome to disagree, but ask a biologist and they’ll laugh at you, though)
The -real- problem with consuming human breast milk is not how ‘disgusting’ it is or ‘how the thought makes my stomach churn’ (honestly, the reverse is true for me, I have to think about something else while eating dairy products to take my mind off of the fact that it’s a by-product from some other animal), rather, the fact that human breast milk is more likely to contain dangerous pathogens that are capable of infecting humans (since said pathogens are more likely to survive in humans). And considering that HIV can be transmitted through breast milk, that’s pretty dangerous (However, this is without taking into consideration pasteurization; I think that would likely have a hand in making our milk sterile), as well as the fact that most women would not line up to donate breast milk as you have said, because of how demeaning they would consider it to be.
However, to that end, I can say easily that rather than farms, human milk donors would ideally (ideally because it’d be a financial nightmare right now) work in a comfortable facility, with paid wages. The system would be regulated and donors screened, meaning that the chances of a dangerous disease like HIV even coming near such a facility approach zero.
Since lactation can be induced without giving birth to children via suction over a period of two or so weeks, no one would be forcibly impregnated. Considering that many women are already ‘reduced’ to prostitution (something that really ought to not be as stigmatized as it is, honestly, considering the fact that… well the only problems with it are that many people, for some odd reason, consider it ‘morally wrong’ and STDs are not fun), to be able to get the money needed to feed oneself and one’s family just by hooking up a rat machine to your breasts and then reading some magazines all day… yeah, I think that’s a bit of a ‘better’ alternative, and I’m 100% sure tons of women (activists included) would agree. Though apparently breast pumps present varying amounts of discomfort (from painful to non at all) depending on the woman, you gotta admit it’s a lot cleaner than prostitution.
Also it’d be a lot harder to make cheese and ice cream and other contents because of the differing content; still possible but much more difficult.
The prevailing truth in all of this, though, is that society is very, very, -very- resistant to change, even if that change is plainly good if one thinks about it objectively, and likely anyone still reading this (and the many who stopped before reaching halfway) are going to think that I’m a crazy, perverted heathen who knows not what I speak of, we’re gonna be stuck consuming some inferior animal’s by-products for a long time.
thank you for your time, this has been some random person giving
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