I am still hyperventilating at the supposedly unbiased reporting in this little article, which manages to seem both very rational, calm and fact-stating at the same time as being scandal-spreading and furore-stoking.
My problems with the article - and the related issues - are many, but the largest are these:
- Breastmilk is designed to be drunk and ingested by humans. Baby humans, it's true, but since when does big people drinking breastmilk suddenly gross us out more than big people drinking something that comes out of the underside of a cow and is meant for baby cows?
- If the article is read carefully, it can be deduced that the breastmilk was pasteruised before it was used, and was screened in accordance with blood donor screening tests before that. This gives it a pretty good chance that it won't have anything to 'pass on' as has been so subtly suggested.
- Cow milk is no dirtier or cleaner. In fact, I have friends who will not now drink cow's milk, having grown up on dairy farms and having experienced for themselves how cows - and their milk - are treated.
- Just because two puritanical, purse-lipped disapprovers complained, an interesting product that managed to be not only a dessert, but also a political statement, lifestyle statement (feminism, animal rights, the technologising of food, our squeamishness about our place in the animal kingdom - take your pick) and general shiner-of-light onto the dark corners of our ideas about ourselves has been taken off the market to be investigated.
I just hope that none of the disapproving nanny-state supporters have realised that any publicity is good publicity, and that all that they are achieving here is giving the icecreamists a goodly dose of airtime. (That's good for nipples too, you know.)
