Can you imagine how expensive Ben And Jerry's ice cream would be if they actually did this? Not only would it be inordinantly expensive due to the relative scarcity of human breast milk, but there would by necessity be health screenings involved that would add to the expense. Where do they think the breast milk would come from? Half of it would probably be from HIV infected crack whores or other addicts needing a fix.
Then you would have the added expense of the different additives required to modify the taste, which is probably significantly different from cow's milk, especially in the case of those donors selling their breast milk for the unsavory purposes I mentioned.
This is just a stupid idea, and I doubt many people would go for it. It shouldn't really come as a surprise to anybody that PETA would come up with something like this. The only really surprising thing is that Ben and Jerry rejected the idea, as they are about loony enough in their own right to jump right on this. I would have expected them to at least test market the idea.
To tell you the truth, I thought this was a joke when I first heard about it, but it's true. Here's the actual letter written to Ben Cohen And Jerry Greenfield, co-founders and owners of Ben And Jerry's.
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
I want to add one more thought. It is true that cow's milk might have a connection to certain health problems, but this is mainly due to people overindulging in the product, not because cow's milk is itself inherently unhealthy for human consumption.
The Swiss example aside, this is a problem that is best solved by engaging in moderate consuption, like almost everything else diet and health related.
