Just like Mom Used to Make
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, I have news for you. This is big news. So before you pour your next bowl of cheerios, before you chug down a nice cold glass of chocolate milk, and before you take one more bite of chubby hubby ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s. Milking cows is cruel. I mean its mean guys. Seriously, farmers are out there everyday making dairy cows live in safety from predators behind a fence. Seriously, farmers are providing food and shelter in the storms that may come upon their fields. And do you realize, I mean are you of the understanding that these cows are forced to relieve their stored milk in their udders by machines that purposely cause a minimal amount of pain to the cow. I mean, seriously, don’t cows have the right to be eaten by wolves, die of starvation, and suffer in the cold like the rest of us to be picked off at random by nature. PETA doesn’t think so, in fact they have a suggestion.
PETA runs a blog from which they pour out their wisdom for kix onto the poor honey bunches of oats willing to listen. On this page, they applauded the efforts of one Swisserlander who recently decided that he plans on swapping 75% of his fruit of the bovine juice out for human milk, breast milk that is to say. Now, frankly I’m a little uncomfortable talking about this subject, but it smacks of stupid. Anyway, PETA thought this Svisserlahnder had a good idea and turned it into a shock-tactic marketing campaign. This campaign was kicked off by sending a letter to Ben & Jerry’s admitted business-hippies, requesting that they make Chunky Monkey a little more like mother used to make (I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry). This letter went out and has yet to garner a response from these Captain Crunches of the Ice Cream industry.
Overall, what’s amusing to me is that if the roles were reversed and the animals were in charge. And women were forced to be milked, there would be an organization of mammals heading up on organization called METH (Mammals for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). These mammals on METH, much like the members of PETA would come up with ridiculous suggestions that would advocate the milking of cows so that the poor humans wouldn’t be exploited. These members of METH, I mean PETA, promote Dr. Spock the author of the famous baby-raising book of the 1950s that had no real knowledge of HIV, AIDS, and all sorts of other diseases as their exemplar of using human milk over dairy milk. Now if you think about it, he was talking about babies being raised on human milk vs. dairy farm milk. I think he could have cared less and wouldn’t even suggest moving in this direction.
This PETA campaign has caused a small spark in the blogosphere, but in truth its a non-issue. By writing about this, I lend PETA a hand in getting their message out. They want the publicity, and they’re going to milk (I know) it for all its worth. They know how to spark conversation, but they know nothing about teaching and educating a public about the true plight of animals. Instead, through their sensationalism, they make the animal cause one to be ridiculed by the right and sidestepped by the left. It’s made the animal decency battle the curdled milk that no one wants to drink.
In all, I was gonna write about the ridiculousness of PETA’s suggestion. I was going to explore the world in which women are harvested for their milk and the testing and screening that would taking away any respect, privacy, or decency they may have felt. PETA just smacks of stupid, and if they were able to mount an honest campaign instead of asking Supermodels to strip naked, push Breast Milk as the new dairy substitute, and make light of our own human condition they actually might get some people to listen to them. They’re the unsweetened shredded mini-whites that look good on the box, but taste like crap in the bowl.