PETA Asks Ben & Jerry's to Use Human Milk to Make Ice Cream
The folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have written a letter to Ben & Jerry's suggesting that the socially conscious purveyors of fats and sugars in the form tasty ice cream switch from bovine milk to human milk. As PETA explains:
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?
Why?
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.
PETA is cribbing the idea from a Swiss restaurant:
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.
Apparently there is already a market for human milk. Find reporting on the proposal and the PETA letter here.