When Did This Site Turn into The Bizarre Food News Network?

From WNBC.com:

VERMONT -- 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."

In a statement Ben and Jerry's said, "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."

Thanks for saying "no, thanks," Ben and Jerry. 

Tonight I'll raise a pint of ONE Cheesecake Brownie in your honor.

Comments

[buttah]

Ummm...seriously??!! When I had my baby 2 1/2 years ago, I did actually taste a little droplet of my breast milk, and I must say, I would not want to eat ANYTHING created with breast milk. Not only does it have a different consistancy, but also a very strange taste. If you've ever smelled or tasted baby formula, go along the same lines!! EEEEWWWWWW! PETA, get real!

[Wendy]

As a new mom of a 7-week-old, this just about made me gag on my own breakfast.

I am exclusively pumping, and I have to say I cannot imagine the number of "woman hours" that would have to go in to producing enough milk for this wacky idea. I barely make enough milk to sustain one human child.

As for that ridiculous restaurant, they are putting out advertising for breast milk at $5 a pint. For all of that work, I would get maybe $10 a day. RIGHT.

I agree with all of the above about quality and disease control as well. How about PETA puts their money where their mouth is and support milk bank donations for sick babies who NEED this milk?

[Heather]

That is just Gross on so many levels- replacing food with human fluids????

[sue Treiber]

I suppose that's one way to get me to stop eating ice cream.
It's just too funny to not be real.
Ta-ta tangerine is the funniest suggestion!

[Christine]

That is just wrong.

Thank you Ben & Jerry.

[Beth]

Seriously PITA, uh, I mean PETA.
Go spend your time elsewhere. Leave the dessert section alone.

[Kellee]

O. M. F. G. - Do the folks at PETA *EVER* read these things out loud before they make them public? Surely there is SOMEONE involved in the organization that has the good sense to say "Hang on a minute guys, this kinda makes us sound like a bunch of retarded idiots". My apologies to the retarded folks for sullying your good name with that comparison.

I think they are delirious from lack of REAL protein.

Thank God Ben & Jerry's had the good sense to reject the idea immediately. Not to mention they were much more polite than I would have been.

As Erin said -

"Too many jokes! Not enough brain space!"

To paraphrase one of my favorite bumper stickers - "Save a cow, eat a member of PETA" (Not Pam Anderson though - too many artificial ingredients! Oh and BTW Pammy - YOU can suck it! Oh NO - too late!)

Not to be redundant - EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW & UGH!!!!!!!

I can see the late nite infomercials now - "Need extra cash? Send for your free no obligation pump kit - sell your breast milk for BIG MONEY!"

PETA - Preposterously Extreme Thick-headed Asshats - OK - coming up with that one made my brain hurt but it was so worth it!!!

I love cows - especially when they are cooked properly (except for hooves - EEEWWW)

If PETA members love animals (and, apparently, hate people) so much, why don't they do all of us a favor and start offing themselves. After all, they are taking up valuable oxygen that all the animals could be using.

OK I will let someone else have a turn now.

Hope the house situation is improving Jen - I offer my humble abode near Cincinnati if needed (albeit a bit far from Chicago)

[Bisskitt]

Aside from sounding GROSS, I am fairly certain you could never make ice cream from mother's milk. My father was in the Ice Cream Biz and loved to wax on and on abut butterfat content - the higher butterfat the better. Then there is the issue of the diet of the women who you could "use". Would you stable up females and make sure they eat a homogenous (heh) diet so that the flavor is uniform?

I suppose this is beside the point, since B & J would go out of business within a week of switching from cows to boobies.

[Katie]

They talked about this a lot on Bob and Tom this morning. They even started coming up with names for this breast milk ice cream! My favorite? Nipple Ripple...HA!

[Jane]

PETA.....oh puhlease!!! Go B&J....keep the Cake Batter boob juice free!

JEN, you must try Cake Batter....blows one cheesecake brownie away! Yellow cake batter flavor ice cream with choc frosting swirl.....yummmmmmmmy!

[Cathi]

I have always said that people were not designed to drink milk (any kind of milk) after the age of 3 or 4. How did this get started? Can you imagine a grown man drinking milk from it's natural origin in any specie? It's just not right! Get your calcium from vegetables!!

[Liz]

I can't help but think that the women they are going to be taking the breast milk from would eventually be treated like cattle themselves, with companies developing more and more techniques to extract the milk, as in what has happened with cows. And my guess is that the women that would resort to selling their milk would most likely be the poorest of the poor.

[Rose]

Oh, PETA, you do know how to get your organization in the news.

[sara]

Ok, so it's not OK to turn cows into milk factories but it is OK to turn women into them? I could totally see less then ethical people paying mothers who do not have a lot of money a pttance for milk they should be giving their baby.
How about people for the ethical treatment of people.

[Renee in Chicago]

Oh PETA, go F yourself. Please. So when I have my child, long after it's done nursing, I should keep pumping to send to Ben and Jerry's? Right. Has PETA thought of how to pasteurize this? Probably not because they only have "ideas" and no execution thoughts behind them. I am not for animal torture, but good Lord, everything in moderation and PETA needs to get over itself.

[tutugirl1345]

Its stuff like this that allows people to label those of us who believe in animal rights as "wackos." Ugh.

And the idea of eating Ben and Jerry's made with breast milk makes me gag.

[JennyW]

Oh PETA. Another completely hare-brained idea with no scientific (or logical) basis whatsoever. They're on my shit-list as it is (they advocate the destruction of ALL pit bulls everywhere! It's the canine equivalent of racism if you ask me) but this is just disgusting and idiotic. Thank God my "Half-Baked" won't become "Half-Boobed."

[Melanie]

So, it's horrible to expect cows to give up their milk for ice cream, but as a mom, it's OK to hook myself up to a pump and deprive MY children of breastmilk so a poor cow isn't inconvenienced.

Yeah, right! I'm going to go have a big ol' burger with cheese and a side of COW milk for lunch.

[Christi]

OK, this is wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to begin!! I LOVE ANIMALS, and have taken in a ton of strays, but for heavens sake...this is way over the top even for an animal lover! PETA needs to get a grip and kudos to B&J to just saying NO! BTW, Jen you are hysterical!

[Erin]

Too many jokes! Not enough brain space!

So, cows full of hormones to produce more milk that was never intended for a baby cow as that is not where mass produced cow's milk comes from=not okay. Humans injecting themselves with hormones and hooking themselves up to the pumping machines so they can make a few extra bucks by selling their lactations down the road at a Starbucks or something=totally fine?

PETA PETA PETA (not shouting, it's an acronym!). This is why you keep getting labelled with the "what a bunch of freaks!" flag :)

Also? Yecccchhhhhh. Though the idea of being in a coffee shop and hearing "We're out of milk, I'm sorry" followed by "I just had my daughter a couple of months ago, you can have some of mine" and some woman then squeezing her boob to fill a milk pitcher is pretty funny. And disturbing.

[gathering dust]

thank goodness for ben and jerry's. while i am a firm supporter of animal rights, that's just ridiculous.

i, too, will be raising a pint tonight - but i think i might go for new york super fudge chunk. cheers to b&j!

[dawn]

um...aren't humans techincally animals? crazy, crazy people.

[Kim]

Not to create an echo chamber, but UGH. This would make me give up Coffee Heath Bar Crunch forever, and that's not a world I want to live in.

Those PETA people are pretty damn crafty...there's a certain part of my brain that thinks, "Hmm, Ingrid, you might be right." It's like an ISTEP question: women's milk is to human as cow's milk is to ? But still no.

Plus, to Emily's point, if it does indeed separate, it's going to need to go through all those same nasty pasteurizing processes that make cow's milk so terrible for us in the first place.

In conclusion...blughhhech

[Jenny, Bloggess]

Two years ago I sent McSweeney's an entire list of names of possible breast milk ice cream flavors. I didn't even get a rejection letter. True story.

Fudge Nipple
Booberry Surprise
Ta-Ta-Tangerine
Braberrys and Creme

[maybeimamazed02]

OMG, EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Never had breast milk, don't want to start now.

Makes me think of the South Park ep where Stan temporarily lives with the PETA people, and they're all married to animals.

Hey Jen, you and Fletch popped up in my dream last night! (Nothing dirty, we were just hanging out. :)

[Double Agent Girl]

GAH.
Ick.
Ugh.

What about disease control? Seems dangerous to willingly consume fluids produced in the human body from random donators.

PETA. Sigh.

[kilax]

PETA probably believes that cows milk is best used for baby cows. I mean, it's kind of weird when you think about it. That's who it is meant for.

But I cannot imagine how they came up with this bizarre idea. They sure do a good job of making vegans look like extremists.

[Karen McBride in Dallas]

I couldn't freaking believe it when I heard this on the news this morning! The epitome of grossness!!!

[Linds]

uggghhhh gross. and i dont think even andrew zimmern of said bizarre foods would venture into eating another person's body secretions. vom. and why does peta insist on being as outrageous and irrational as possible, making everyone else who cares about animal rights seem outrageous and irrational...

[Christine]

Gak.....there are reasons I never became a mom. One of them is the ick factor of all the fluids. Being milky is one of those fluids. Also, I can just see women in third world countries providing milk for products in industrialized countries and their children suffering for it. That whole supply chain economics thingy at work, or something. Oh, and as a side note, cows are dumb as rocks. They don't miss the milk. Really.

[Emily]

You must be fucking with me.

Do these PETA asshats know that breast milk separates after like, a few hours? I am not sure how long it takes cow's milk to separate, but I am suspecting that ice cream would not have a very long shelf life as a result.

Also, the thought of drinking something that came out of some other woman's ta-tas is not very appetizing to me. At least not as an adult.
Anyway, thank you B&J for making sure that our premium ice cream stays free of boob juice and Jen, thanks for the laugh!
--Emily

[The Other Jen]

That's pretty disgusting. I didn't have my own mothers breast milk when I was a baby so I certainly don't want someone elses mothers breast milk now that I'm an adult.

And I, too, raise a pint of ONE Cheesecake Brownie in Ben & Jerry's honor. (Seriously, could they have made a better flavor?)

[Amy Risner]

Ohhh yea this was on CNN! It just sounds creepy doesn't it? And since I was too young to remember what breast milk looks/tastes like, maybe someone who has been a mother can enlighten me: I heard that human milk has a different consistency than cow's milk? Thus, a different taste as well. Is this true? And if so, wouldn't that affect the taste and texture of the ice cream?

[Lisa Johnson]

That would make be give up ice cream for good! EEWWWW...love to know what catchy name Ben & Jerry would come up with to go on it though. Something like Boobbery?

[Seeking Imperfection]

I heard someone talking about this in Starbucks this morning and I thought they were kidding! I admire (some of) PETAs efforts; however, this is crossing the line.

[Kristi Brown]

Oh my! I kinda wish strictly for entertainment purposes that PETA would sent my company letters too! Ha-Ha!

[lisamechelle]

Uh --- ew! I love Ben and Jerry's, but I can honestly say I'd quit cold-turkey before I'd be eating someone's frozen breast milk. That's disgusting. And only PETA would think of it.