Get ready for "Lactalicious" ice cream!

Can you tell the new school year's schedule is hitting mom pretty hard too? I haven't written for nearly a week! This headline, though, has stopped me in my "frantically-cleaning-up-before-my-mother-in-law-arrives" tracks. PETA wants Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream to use mother's milk in their treats.

I was going to give PETA a courtesy link here, but I went to their homepage and couldn't stop myself from clicking on a video where pigs, allegedly, raised for meat in Hormel products were abused, beaten, etc, etc, etc. The video was on for a total of about 7 seconds before I had to x-out. That site is not for sensitive views, like myself. My immediate next search was for tips on how to become a vegetarian. My great-uncle had a pig farm and while those cute piglets ultimately ended up in sausage they had a good life full of sunshine, soft ground beneath them and room to, oh I don't know, MOVE! Seek out that video on the PETA site if you'd wish, but be forewarned.

Anyway, what humors me about PETA's publicity stunt...er...suggestion to Ben & Jerry's is that it makes no sense. How could they be even the teeniest bit convinced that moms providing breast milk for ice cream wouldn't eventually turn into the new form of dairy cow. Surely moms would be paid. And surely the quantity each mom produced would be monitored. Perhaps she'd feel pressure to lactate more. So she'd fill her body with every "remedy" she could find to support her family. Suddenly we have hormone-laden milk from a sack-of-bones woman whose sole purpose in her life is to produce enough milk for ice cream. Is that not factory farming?

Now I get what the PETA folks are saying. I breastfed one daughter for 15 months and another for 20. I say I'm "pro-breastfeeding" is an understatement. I do think it's the absolute best. I do get frustrated when moms are unsupported in continuing. I roll my eyes when I hear "formula is better for them anyway" or "it was just too hard." Breast milk is the ultimate in nutrition for babies and toddlers. But make no mistake. It's a bodily fluid. And folks, I don't swap those with just anyone. Ice cream filled with breast milk would be doing just that - except it would be from many somebodies. The concept of breast milk being ingested by a human is beautiful. When that milk comes from a stranger, could carry disease or the tastes of what she had for dinner the night before, I'm icked out.

The health screening used in breast milk banks is stringent. Plus, it's intended for infants, babies and toddlers. Beyond that age group, I'd love to see research that suggests there are health benefits to consuming breast milk.

If PETA was truly interested in ethical treatment, why are they not approaching Ben & Jerry's about using soy or other organic product in their ice cream?

[photo courtesy of www.benjerry.com]