From Weird to Weirder: Breast Milk & Jail

I guess there’s strange news every week, maybe every day.
This week, three particular stories really made me wonder.
The first was about a restaurant in Switzerland. The owner plans to serve stews, soups and sauces made using human breast milk, according to The Telegraph:

The owner of the Storchen restaurant in the exclusive Winterthur resort will improve his menu with local specialties such as meat stew and various soups and sauces containing at least 75 per cent of mother's milk.
"We have all been raised on it. Why should we not include it into our diet?" Hans Locher, who has become Switzerland most controversial restaurant owner, said.
Mr Locher attracted the attention of the leading media of the German-speaking world this week after he posted ads looking for women donors, who will receive just over three pounds for 14 ounces of their milk.
He said: "I first experimented with breast milk when my daughter was born.

"One can cook really delicious things with it. However, it always needs to be mixed with a bit of whipped cream, in order to keep the consistency."
The food control authority in Switzerland was initially confused by the apparent loophole in local legislation regulating the use of human milk and it was not clear whether Mr Locher could actually be banned from serving his specialties.


"Humans as producers of milk are simply not envisaged in the legislation.

"They are not on the list of approved species such as cows and sheep, but they are also not on the list of the banned species such as apes and primates," Rolf Etter of the Zurich food control laboratory said.

Storchen Restaurant on the River Limmat in Zurich, Switzerland.

According to the story, women will be paid $5.40 for 14 ounces of milk.




Then, a day or two after reading that story, I heard the following which came from WPTZ in Vermont:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman.

"PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says.

PETA officials say a move to human breast milk would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health.

"The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn't make sense," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Everyone knows that 'the breast is best,' so Ben & Jerry's could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk."
"We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child," said a spokesperson for Ben and Jerry's.

Can you imagine the fun the FDA would have with this? Or the headaches? In Switzerland for the restaurant or in the US for the ice cream company, what if the donor was on drugs? What if she had a terrible disease? What kind of screening? All natural ingredients?

The final story that caused me to shake my head was the one about Henry Earl. He has just been arrested for the 1000th time. All arrests have been in Lexington, Kentucky. Apparently he has spent over 4000 days behind bars. He has appeared on talk shows and there are web sites which feature him. Is it possible society is making a folk hero out of this guy? If so, we’re as guilty as he is!