Human breast milk as humane dairy option

[Guest guest]

Did any of y'all see the movie Borat? There was a scene when Borat offered some

homemade cheese to a politician, and while watching him eat, informed him that

Borat's wife had made the cheese with her own breast milk. The guy just about

choked. When I saw that, I was like, " RIGHT ON! " Point 1 for the vegans! How

silly for people to be grossed out by milk that was voluntarily taken from

healthy female humans, while simultaneously NOT being grossed out by milk

forcibly taken from diseased and traumatized cows.

 

On the flip side, if I were breast feeding and had some left over, I'd be happy

to use the milk to make cheese or ice cream or whatever. (Do any vegan moms on

the list do anything like that?) Probably not something " healthy " for us to eat

(would be fattening, etc), but ... it ought to be better than consuming the same

products made with the breast milk of cows. (And everyone knows how popular

those products are, despite the health concerns, and/or issues with how

unnatural it is for adult mammals to drink milk.) If it's okay for my baby to

eat, it should be okay for cheese-aholics like my boyfriend or my mom or my

sister, right?

 

Well, as it turns out, there is a New York chef who started making cheese from

his vegetarian wife's extra supply of milk.

 

Ronnie Citron-Fink at care2.com wrote a story about it, saying that the chef

offered the " Mommy's Milk Cheese " as samples to his customers until the Health

Dept. asked him to stop.

 

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/breast-is-always-best-mommys-milk-is-served-at-\

nyc-restaurant.html

 

However, on his web site, the chef (Daniel Angerer) denied having served the

food as his restaurant. Here's what Ronnie Citron-Fink wrote in response to

comments refuting the accuracy of her original post.

 

" I provided some of my sources for this article in the comments below. Yes, it

was sensationalized in the NYC papers and on the TV stations, but I thought it

was also an interesting and worthy topic for discussion here.

 

" From all of my research at the time when I wrote this article (when the story

came out), Chef Angerer served the cheese in his restaurant until he was told to

stop. Along with the other two articles that I quoted from in my comment below

here are 2 more articles and a quote from NBC confirming that he did serve the

cheese in his restaurant. It seems he has since denied it:

 

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35778477/ns/today-today_food_and_wine/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-09/breast-milk-cheese/

 

" This is a quote from the NBC report:

" When Angerer posted a recipe for " My Spouse's Mommy's Milk Cheese " on his blog,

customers began calling his eatery begging for a taste. So he began offering an

appetizer of breast-milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper at Klee

Brasserie. "

 

"

-- Quotes from Ronnie Citron-Fink

 

 

I've always wondered why the " organic " and " humane " dairy folks don't ask for

donations from nursing moms who have some extra left over. (Or do they?) I

don't think it's healthy for mammals to drink breast milk as adults (whether it

comes from your own species or not), but for those who want to drink milk, and

who want the most " humane " option possible ... then, milk that has been

voluntarily provided by human moms should be the first choice, right?

 

Here's the chef's web site (Chef Daniel Angerer) where he talks about making

Mommy's Milk cheese. His recipe calls for rennet, which I thought was strange

.... apparently he's making non-vegetarian cheese out of his vegetarian wife's

breast milk. I wonder if his wife is okay with that.

 

http://chefdanielangerer.typepad.com/chef_daniel_angerers_blog/2010/02/mommys-mi\

lk.html

 

I've been wanting to ask some fellow veg people about this topic, and this news

article looked like a good opportunity.

 

-Rachel D.

San Francisco, CA