[lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...

[123hop at comcast.net]

Historically, rich women have refused to breast-feed, getting peasant wet-nurses to do the job instead. This is because breast-feeding is held to be animal-like, and because it supposedly causes breasts to sag. So your hypothetical makes no sense. If rich women refused to breast feed it's because they would not want the bother of lactation and would want the process to stop ASAP. It does after about a week of non-use. Moreover, they do not need the money.

There's no question that the poor sell themselves piecemeal to survive and have been doing so for a long time. This story just struck me as a particularly stark example. The only thing more nauseating than the story were the accompanying comments, which praised the entrepreneurship of the ice cream shop.

How good the milk is has a lot to do with the mother's state of health and state of mind. The processes you mention, would of course make it less healthy.

Joanna

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Bennett" <bennett.mab at gmail.com>
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 2:47:41 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...

The Swiftian connection indeed clear here, but poor folks have been selling
their blood for decades, women have been selling their hair for even longer,
prostitutes have been selling their bodies more or less forever, and
virtually all of us sell, or rent, ourselves to our employers, so one more
ingenious means of exploiting the exploitable is mere piling on by now.
Wouldn't much of this milk come from relatively affluent women who don't
breast feed anyway?  And why would human breast milk be uniquely healthy
once it is put to commercial use?  I would suspect the pasteurization and
refinement of the product to make it safe for all would destroy many of its
uniquely beneficial properties.  I'm still waiting for the implementation of
the proposal that I read about in Fast Company at the height of the
dot.comboom and during the heyday of Enron: The commodification of the
individual
by allowing her or him to to sell shares in themselves.  It's bound to
happen.

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 12:57 PM, <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:


> A breast milk farm would be interesting to see. Clearly, the milk givers
> would be from the poverty/working class. A new form of exploitation -- and
> healthy for you too!
>
> Dennis
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> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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