PETA's "The Breast Is Best!"

On the morning of September 23rd, 2008, PETA relayed a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co founders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. ice cream, requesting they substitute cow's milk with human breast milk in their products. Where did they get the idea? They found news reports of a Swiss restaurant owner who will start buying breast milk from nursing mothers and replacing seventy five percent of cow's milk in the food he uses with breast milk. PETA suggested to Cohen and Greenfield that ”Such a move on their part would lessen the suffering dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health at the same time.”

PETA Executive Vice President, Tracy Reiman, says ”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. Everyone knows that 'the breast is best', so Ben & Jerry's could do consumers a big favor by making the switch to breast milk.”

The actual letter:

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than two 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 seventy five 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,l 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 animals, 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 ten 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 fourteen to seventeen 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

Now, I personally am not a big fan of PETA. I'm an Iowa girl, born here and raised here. I find PETA a bit extreme and sometimes deceitful. However, I will not spend my time ranting here, mostly breaking apart this news report and analyzing it logically.

As I mentioned above, I'm from Iowa. Agriculture is a HUGE part of our economy. Every where you turn there's corn fields and cows. There are plenty of dairy farms around here, and I know for a fact that milking a cow is not harmful for them in any way. In fact, it's good for the cows.

Dairy farmers don't milk the cow so much that there is none left for her calf. Small dairy farms have about a hundred head of cattle, not counting calves. Given the quantities of cows they have, they do not need to take a lot of milk from the nursing heifer. Also, a heifer can produce milk for her calf as long as the calf needs it. The heifer's brain releases a hormone that keeps up her milk production, the same for human mothers.

Personally, I don't think PETA sees the impact this would have on our economy. If Ben & Jerry's made the switch, other companies would eventually make the switch. It would be a chain reaction until the millions of dairy farmers were no longer needed. Millions of families would be put out of work. The economy, especially in the Midwest, would plummet. Plus, if the farmers didn't need their cows, where would the cattle go? They'd either have to be killed or they'd end up roaming the land freely...which would be awkward...and dangerous. Thousands of people hit deer with their cars. Few people hit cows, but those who do end up totaling their vehicles more times than not. And really, do you want to be coming out of a grocery store and see a cow circling the parking lot? I didn't think so. It'd be quite the sight...but strange. If PETA really cared about the cows, they wouldn't allow that to happen because really, it wouldn't. Farmers would kill the not needed cows. So you think about it.

Thanks to Peta.org for information.