Peta wants Ben and Jerry's to use human breast milk

[Morg]

WATERBURY, Vt. -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman.

"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," the statement says.

PETA officials say a move to human breast milk would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health.

"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."

"We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child," said a spokesperson for Ben and Jerry's.

Read PETA's letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I'd like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry's.

Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry's replaced the cow's milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits.

Using cow's milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer's health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America's number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can't produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can't even turn around.

The breast is best! Won't you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow's milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry's ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman

Executive Vice President

http://www.wptz.com/news/17539127/detail.html

PETA never was great in the smarts department

 

[bullets]

all we need is a bunch of people growing up with issues because they didn't get enough breast milk .

 

[Nirvana]

That's disgusting.

 

[Silk Spectre]

Just when I thought PETA could not get any more strange. I love animals, but PETA is nuts.

 

[Mee]

Morg: I'll work on that assembly line!

 

[tzarinna]

So if I do get pregnant, how much are we talking here? I am broke ya know.

 

[Spidey-Bat]

That's unethical to humans. And humans are technically animals. So PETA is contradicting itself.

It's also incredibly disgusting and makes me want to vomit.

That said. Who would do the milking?

 

[terry78]

I'm waiting for some new flavors featuring it.

Tit-tastic Toffee.

 

[Addendum]

There's a video on the internet of a woman in England that still breastfeeds her daughter. Her daughter is 8 years old. It's one of the more ****ed up things I've ever watched.

I don't even remember what breast milk tastes like, nor do I want to try it again as an adult.

I wouldn't be surprised if PETA comes out with a letter asking meat packing plant to use unwanted babies in place of calves for veal dishes, because some restaurant in France has tried it.

 

[bunk]

Whatever positive effect that could have on dairy cows would be so minimal it just really makes no sense. On the other hand it could make for some awesome new ice cream names.

 

[Spidey-Bat]

There's a video on the internet of a woman in England that still breastfeeds her daughter. Her daughter is 8 years old. It's one of the more ****ed up things I've ever watched.

Something like that happened on Scrubs where some 4 or 5 year old kid was still breast feeding.

I wouldn't be surprised if PETA comes out with a letter asking meat packing plant to use unwanted babies in place of calves for veal dishes, because some restaurant in France has tried it.

Since women have to be pregnant to produce breast milk, they could use the babies from those pregnancies in place of veal.

 

[Addendum]

And then there's bitty from Little Britain

 

[Shifty]

Reiman should make her own ice cream.

 

[Rando]

this is odd.

 

[Ziggyman]

Cambodian breast milk is the best!!!

 

[Danalys]

let's say that peta is correct and cows shouldn't be milked etc, you know what happens to the cows in that case, all slaughtered since there is no insentive for a farmer to keep them. and i think they'd rather use the field previously occupied by cows for some thing else. let alone the fact that over the past 100 years cows have been artificially selected for traits that make them unfit to survive in anything but a symbiotic relationship with humans. they produce too much milk for their calves alone. i recall there being problems for the cow if they are not milked because of that, can't remember specific problems tho.

 

[Majic Walrus]

"Using cow's milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer's health."

WTF Peta? I mean serious WTF?

That has to be the least intelligently posed argument I've ever read, not to mention the absolute out-and-out **** off dumbest argument ever.

The idea of switching to human milk is absurd. Firstly you'd have to regulate the food intake of the "milk women" to ensure that they weren't digesting anything dangerous. In addition to this you'd have to use artificial enriching agents and vitamins to get the same value as we get from cow's milk. Also you'd have to slaughter a whole bunch of cows which just became useless, but that's okay because you're going to need a **** ton of women lined in stalls with there teats hanging out constantly being milked.

Peta. People enjoying teat abuse.

 

[Nirvana]

Does anyone actually like Peta?

 

[Majic Walrus]

let's say that peta is correct and cows shouldn't be milked etc, you know what happens to the cows in that case, all slaughtered since there is no insentive for a farmer to keep them. and i think they'd rather use the field previously occupied by cows for some thing else. let alone the fact that over the past 100 years cows have been artificially selected for traits that make them unfit to survive in anything but a symbiotic relationship with humans. they produce too much milk for their calves alone. i recall there being problems for the cow if they are not milked because of that, can't remember specific problems tho.

Yep. Not to mention all those unemployed dairy farm workers that will have no job (unless they recently gave birth).

 

[AlteredEgo]

haha, breast is best. clever clever peta.

 

[DBella]

So it's okay to hurt women's nipples but not cows'?? Suck my *******, PETA! On second thought... *leaves thread*

 

[Ziggyman]

DBella's awesome!

 

[chaseter]

I want to work at the human breast milk production facility!

 

[The Lizard]

PETA's most outspoken celebrity member is Pamela Anderson, so there's your intellect level.

 

[Ziggyman]

PETA's most outspoken celebrity member is Pamela Anderson, so there's your intellect level.

Surly she must join the cause!