redneckgaijin

No, seriously; they asked Ben and Jerry's to do it.

At this point about half the WLP fans (these days, the other half are only fans of Peter is the Wolf) are saying, "All RIGHT! Great idea! When can we buy it?"

Well... no, it's not a great idea. In fact it's really stupid.

First, let's go on the premise. PETA believes that, once we stop eating animals and all products thereof, those animals will go on to live happy natural lives. The truth, of course, is much more brutal; if not for their commercial value, cattle probably would have long since been driven extinct. The reason there are about a billion cattle on the planet today (according to Wikipedia) isn't that they're sacred in India; it's that they're TASTY. If they tasted horrible, either we wouldn't have domesticated them at all- in which case move over for goats, you big fat bastards- or they would be used solely for animal labor, in which case they'd be isolated to Africa, rural Asia, and historical reenactment museums, if that. That's presuming the current hybrid breeds would survive in the wild; some would, many wouldn't.

Second, PETA is flat-out lying on certain of their facts. More studies have proclaimed the general healthiness of milk consumption than have blamed it for obesity and diabetes. Skim milk, in fact, can reduce the chance of diabetes in the obese.

Third, let's talk simple logistics. The average Holstein dairy cow, when producing milk, produces about seventeen gallons of milk a day. The most I've ever heard of any single human female producing milk in a day is ONE gallon or so- and, again, that's under truly unusual conditions. That means to replace every dairy cow you'd need about seventeen, count 'em, SEVENTEEN women essentially living to do nothing other than be milked. Even if women were satisfied to put up with such treatment- and believe me, folks like PETA have some good reason to be disgusted by factory farming methods- and even if it were cost effective, which it's not, there just plain aren't enough women in the world to make it work.

I'm a little curious about how human-milk ice cream would work, but if and when it happens it'd be a damn expensive taste to try out. It's fantasy territory for a REASON, breast-fiends who read this...

... and, apparently, PETA likes to live in Fantasyland.

Of course, I'm of the opinion that PETA is but a subset of a larger group: PEME, People for the Extinction of Mankind, Eventually.

Folks, humans are part of the natural system just like tigers and wildebeest. We've just organized our predator-prey symbiosis into a more efficient (and, often, more brutal) system to feed a vastly larger number of people. If it's OK for Leo the lion to bring down an antelope after a long, terrifying pursuit and a slow, painful death, then it should also be OK for us to tuck into a cheeseburger (on whole wheat bun with side salad, if it makes you feel better). Trying to pretend, like PETA does, that the world would be better off without mankind misses the point- that the reason we'd want the world to be better of is to ensure our species' continued survival in it.

(And I know humanity would survive without Ben & Jerry's, but it's the principle of the thing.)

(I don't know if humanity would survive without Blue Bell, though.)