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Peta's Letter To Ben Cohen And Jerry Greenfield

September 23, 2008

Dear Mr. Cohen And Mr. Greenfield,

On Behalf Of Peta And Our More Than 2 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 75 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, 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 Mammals, 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 10 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 14 To 17 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 Preside

Ok I know it's a long quote. sorry for that,but seriously what on earth is this all about. Surely she can't be serious can she? I'm all in favour of stoping cruelty to animals and all that, but when campaigners come out with stuff like this, it does them no good whats so ever, it just makes anyone connected to then seem crazy.

I knew they were crazy after they burned cars belonging to scientists in my area who were using rats to find a cure for cancer. they value the lives of animals over humans and that is just about as crazy as you can get. Besides, how is breast milk any less likely to cause any of those "milk-related" problems? cow milk is amazingly good for you in the amounts recommended by the food pyramid.

With that much overuse of Title Case she deserves to be ignored or ridiculed. Don't get me started on PETA...in the past they've paid known arsonists to teach high school children how to make bombs from household items and they have a vision where no-one would be able to keep pets. Plus they want a complete ban on animal testing (and have been very violent in trying to get this), yet one of their senior members takes insulin injections which were initially tested on animals.

Quote from flymike91 :

they value the lives of animals over humans and that is just about as crazy as you can get.

by what possible measure is human life more valuable than any other life? and if you say genesis ill beat you to death with the smallest bible i can find

Quote from amp88 :

With that much overuse of Title Case she deserves to be ignored or ridiculed.

actually thats victors fault

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Plus they want a complete ban on animal testing (and have been very violent in trying to get this), yet one of their senior members takes insulin injections which were initially tested on animals.

that critique hardly makes any sense


now i agree theyre complete nutters but that doesnt make either of you any more logical than them

On a similar vein, why is there such a taboo about human breast milk?

PETA's main problem is that while they're for animal rights, they seem to think that this should be at the expense of people's rights.

It looked so much like a hoax, I first had to check their own site. Apparently, they are serious.

Soooo... In order to keep up with the enormous demand for breast milk, PETA will want women to be forcefully impregnated every two years. To be bred (or genetically engineered) for maximum milk production, so they can produce 10 times the natural amount of milk. And after productive life, what would PETA do with the women's wasted bodies? And their babies should be fed with, ummm... soy? Or sold to farms?

illepall

When I want human breast milk i'll suck the tit myself thanks. I've had it, it's nice, but has a distinctly "unpasturised" taste.

I used to be quite taken with the animal rights argument, but several things changed my mind. Firstly I live near the countries largest animal testing lab and the campaign of terror by activists extended beyond the rational and frequently resulted in my town being attacked. Some of their actions against people who worked at the lab where not the actions of decent human beings, so I just dont like the protesters themselves, but it gets worse for their case.

Some time ago I came to the rationalisation that vegetables where as much entitled to their life as animals. I mean they are afterall alive, you go to a rainforest or spend time watching the cycle of life in the country and you'll see plants fighting other plants by blocking out the light of neighbouring plants in their effort to stay alive.

Plants have every right to life, as much as animals. And so I view anyone who spares the lives of cute fluffy things in favour of plants as a speciesist, and consequently I treat them as all others with a prejudice. Vegetarianism is a form of xenophobia and it should not be tolerated in a modern society.

Life begets life, that is the cycle. The right thing to do is to not take more life than you have too, it's not sparring some forms of life because it's cute and cuddly.

Animal rights activists, vegetarians and vegans, are all speciesist biggots with extremely delluded prejudicial views. We should stamp this trend out and fight against such biggots to make a better world for our children.

Sense of humour failure? This is hilarious. Maybe someone was serious about the idea, maybe not... I don't know yet, but this reminds me of 'A Modest Proposal'

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Some time ago I came to the rationalisation that vegetables where as much entitled to their life as animals. I mean they are afterall alive, you go to a rainforest or spend time watching the cycle of life in the country and you'll see plants fighting other plants by blocking out the light of neighbouring plants in their effort to stay alive.

Ah but the difference is, plants aren't sentient y'see.

Quote from TiJay :

Ah but the difference is, plants aren't sentient y'see.

Xenophobic propaganda nonsense. Sentience has never been defined as an animal only concept and nor has scientific provenance ever been established for it being a cerebral process. The concept of "I" or "we" may well exist for plants just as much as it does for animals. Plants fight to live, and demonstrate other characteristic traits such as even responding to speach. It might be an alien concept to us, but it is entirely feasable that plants have a concept of "I" or "we" and therefore have sentience.

To argue otherwise is to buy into the propaganda of leftist exremists who want to spare the cute and fluffy things - this is a species prejudice, and as such a completely abhorrent concept.

All life deserves a fair chance.

Saying a plant isnt sentient is no better than saying rats should be used for cancer research.

He should keep his wacky ideas to himself and concentrate on his rallying...

Quote from Shotglass :

that critique hardly makes any sense

It makes perfect sense. Their Vice President is a hypocrite. They rally on against animal testing while one of their higher-ups uses product that is made possible directly from animal testing. You don't see that hypocrisy?

I don't have a problem with vegetarianism or veganism. I really don't. But I do hate PETA with every fiber of my being.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Plants have every right to life, as much as animals. And so I view anyone who spares the lives of cute fluffy things in favour of plants as a speciesist, and consequently I treat them as all others with a prejudice.

"Right to life" is a human construct, and there are 3 self-consistent positions you can take in it:

• No organism has a right to life. Allows murder and cannibalism, which is generally frowned upon.
  
• All organisms have a right to life. While you were reading that sentence, your body was killing thousands of microbes. Causes tremendous guilt feelings.
  
• Each organism is placed on a gradual scale between full rights (like humans have now), and none.
  

The latter position is taken by Peter Singer in "Animal Liberation". A good read if you seriously want to think this over. IIRC Singer says that an organism has more rights if it has a more complicated nervous system (and thus can suffer in ways humans can understand).

BTW, speciesism is what we've basically been doing for centuries: the black&white distinction that humans have full rights, and other animals have none.

Or were you just trolling, Becky?

I don't like PETA, the humans won, we are the dominant species on this planet because we beat all the other animals, or were smart enough to run away from them. So we shouldn't act as if we were just plonked down here a couple of hundred years ago and act as if we don't own the place. We own the planet, we have to look after it, but not to the point where you give animals more rights than people.

Breast milk instead of cows milk? If I go to town with a bowl of Corn Flakes and milk the first female PETA member I find, I bet I will get arrested and put on some kind of list.

I hate PETA and it's happy-clappy holier-than-thou attitude. Them and to a lesser extent the RSPCA seem focused on making people who own animals and people who use animals lives a misery

Well, as life goes, we are made in a way that needs us to exploit other life forms to survive. So when I am concerned with PETA, I usually just shrug and go the other way.

Of course I don't think it is acceptable to be unneccessarily cruel to animals, and in fact, I get guilt feelings after splatting a spider (even though I hate them), let alone being able to hunt and kill for myself. But when we face the brutal truth, we're omnivores, not herbivores.

Also, on a rather ironic sidenote, domestication is the best thing that could happen to cows, pigs and sheep. Without it, there would have never been such a huge population of those animals, and perhaps they would have died out by now, if we wouldn't breed them for a purpose. Allright, the purpose is somewhat macabre, but still, such a huge population wouldn't be possible in the wild. So, from an individual perspective, domestication might not be optimal, but seen from the specias as a whole, it is very beneficial.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Breast milk instead of cows milk? If I go to town with a bowl of Corn Flakes and milk the first female PETA member I find, I bet I will get arrested and put on some kind of list.

I dunno, I think the whole "Animal rights" is a load of crap. What's next, people demanding dogs and cats the right to vote for president?

I for one welcome our Feline and Canine overlords?

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PETA have lost the plot

They never even had it on day one.

Bunch of muppets. How else do they expect humanity to be able to provide adequate protein when everyone is on a bloody vegan diet.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Some time ago I came to the rationalisation that vegetables where as much entitled to their life as animals.

ah yes i stumbeled over that myself as well
but you dont have to be a vegan to be for animal rights and i dont see an unavoidable conflict between eating animals that were bred as food and animal rights as long as the animal was kept in a different way than most are today
certainly you kill the plant or animal but thats the way of life for anything that isnt green and full of chlorophyll but unlike the animals usually the worst thing we do to plant is spray them with pesticides which is aguably doing it a favour

ive yet to hear from any animal rights activists that wants to turn lions into vegans which would be the logical conclusion

Quote from MAGGOT :

It makes perfect sense. Their Vice President is a hypocrite. They rally on against animal testing while one of their higher-ups uses product that is made possible directly from animal testing. You don't see that hypocrisy?

there nothing wrong with accepting something that happened years ago as a given... you cant fight the past
also what do you expect him to do? roll over and die from diabetis?
when did north america rediscover the word hypocricy btw? you hear it a lot these days as the easiest accusation since it requires almost no thinking from the one making it and can be used practically on everyone at any time

Quote from flymike91 :

they value the lives of animals over humans and that is just about as crazy as you can get.

You are an animal, too, you know?

Just saying, I don't agree with their views, either.

Quote from Shotglass :

there nothing wrong with accepting something that happened years ago as a given... you cant fight the past
also what do you expect him to do? roll over and die from diabetis?
when did north america rediscover the word hypocricy btw? you hear it a lot these days as the easiest accusation since it requires almost no thinking from the one making it and can be used practically on everyone at any time

If her beliefs really are that strong she could have decided not to take the treatment. A lot of people throughout human history have died for less. The point I was trying to make was that it was clear hypocrisy. She says she wants a ban on animal testing and her organisation has attacked people violently in the past (there are allegations that they have paid people to attack testing facilities but I'm not sure if any of them have stuck...). Yet she has a condition which requires drugs which used animal testing in their development. If that's not hypocrisy I don't know what is. I originally made the comment and I'm Scottish. Had anyone else made the same comment it would have been just as valid, even if they came from North America or the moon (I say the moon because I'm not sure what you were trying to achieve by saying North America).

This is the internet amp, every English speaker is American until proven otherwise ... It's the same logic that has installers list language options with "English (United States)" and fail to list English for other countries, yet often have no words other than normal bog standard English in them. Although as far as I can see the only difference with English (United Kingdom) and standard language used in installers hasnt been implemented anyway (The relabelling of "OK" buttons to "Tally Ho!").

Quote from amp88 :

She says she wants a ban on animal testing and her organisation has attacked people violently in the past [...]. Yet she has a condition which requires drugs which used animal testing in their development. If that's not hypocrisy I don't know what is.

She probably also took some painkillers once, which were also tested on animals (afiak animal testing is mandatory for drugs). She also lives in a house that was built by people that ate meat. Is that hypocrisy?

Even the most ardent activist has to compromise somewhere. If not, the only option left is emigration.

This isn't a serious suggestion. Anyone who takes five seconds to consider the practicalities of it will realise it isn't a serious suggestion. It's perhaps intended to provoke thought about whether it would be OK to treat human women the way we treat dairy cattle, but if that's the intent and assuming we've got an average bunch of internet slobs in here, it's a failure.

Anyway, cows are ace. They like us, we like them. Would we want to see all the cows in our fields replaced by large-breasted women? That's an argument for another day.