Really?

PETA's mission is a good one: stop animal cruelty, help people understand the environmental impact of their dietary choices, and help people be healthier. None of those things are bad. I agree with all of them. I don't' live a perfect life, but most of the choices I make are with these things in mind. Not all choices, but most.

However, how can you not get that by acting like lunatics you loose people who agree with you and repel those who don't?

Throwing paint on a person wearing a fur coat is willful destruction of private property. I don't own a fur coat. I don't agree with the torturous deaths that lead to fur coats. But if I did, and someone trashed my coat, I'd be pissed and I'd prosecute. Using that logic, why don't people holding stock in oil come to homes of PETA members and smash their solar panels? That's just stupid. Educating people is important. Annoying them is counter-productive.

Equating meat eating with Jeffery Dahmer is likewise unwise. Not nonfactual, but culturally inappropriate to say the least. In different times and different places eating people may be a sign of respect or a ritual of war, and really, what is the difference between eating the meat of dogs and cows? Hindus are as appalled with us as we are with the eating of German Shepards in China. However, in the here and now, the yuck factor supersedes the historical and anthropological parallels and the message is dismissed by the very people it was intended to shock and convert.

So, what led to this rant? The news that PETA has proposed that "...Ben & Jerry's use breast milk in its ice cream." Really? Obviously, PETA members know that this is fiscally impossible, just to look at the logical first. Mother's milk is liquid gold and very expensive. Even if it were possible, immediately there would be feminists protesting the use of women as dairy producers.

But come on! This stunt at its very core makes PETA look like IDIOTS, even knowing it's a publicity stunt. Many people are nauseated by the idea of giving their own babies the milk specially made for them, let alone making a consumable, mass market product from it! Granted, they are woefully misinformed and culturally indoctrinated to the point that they are making less than optimal choices for their babies. There is abundant scientific evidence that there is nothing as beneficial as human mother's milk for human babies. Knowing that doesn't change the cultural perception. It is what it is and you need to meet people where they are. Grossing them out isn't going to win any converts.

Likewise, there is abundant science to show that cow's milk causes a whole host of health problems, not just in babies, but in adults as well. Yes, babies need mother's milk. If I want breast milk ice cream, I'll make my own thanks.

I live in WI and I know (thanks to California Milk Producers) that I live in a state full of depressed cows. I see their babies in boxes, not knowing they are merely 'veal'...a by product of the milk humans consume. That is more likely to persuade me to give up my yogurt than the latest PETA stunt.

The facts PETA wants to disseminate are sound. Too bad no one will listen to a bunch of loonies.