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Goats tormented to undermine women

Lynn Sawyer | 11.02.2009 11:45 | Animal Liberation | Gender | Health

Genetically modified goats are being bred to produce "human" milk for babies who are not breast fed due to choice or because a mother cannot breastfeed.

As a midwife and an animal rights person I am utterly disgusted.

It is true some mothers cannot breastfeed sometimes this is tempoarary due to for example a very traumatic birth, or permanent for example a double mastectomy, or death.Regardless the infant/s need food or they will perish. The solution to this problem is simple and has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, probably prior to human existance.....another mother provides the milk, for example a vixen will feed the cubs of another vixen, ditto with dolphins. In the past women taking on the role of wet nurses saved countless babies from starvation (and still do albeit not much in the UK), now women continue this ancient life saving practice by donating breast milk to donated breast milk (DBM) banks thoughout the UK. A real solution would be to expand the practice with NHS appeals through the media in the same way in which appealsd for blood donors are made. At present DBM tends to be reserved for ill and premature babies and is very precious. Donors volunteer, are screened, express the milk and it is then fozen in the DBM bank until being used. To reiterate, DBM saves lives.

For well over a hundred years those making a profit out of formula milk have undermined women's faith in our own bodies to peddle at best an adequate but inferior product (like white lightning cider compared to the best champagne), at worst they killed babies in the millions and made many more ill. The GM goat milk is just another attempt to make a profit by trying to persuade people that there is no difference between their "milk" and human milk. Utter nonsense. Of course milk donated by women for babies is non profit making so it is not lucrative.

Mothers who breast feed are still undermined and shouted at when they use their bodies to feed their young rather than to titilate (pardon the pun). Some so-called men are still pathetic enough to be jealous of breast feeding infants and breasts as belonging to them rather than to babies. It is common knowledge that much domestic abuse starts around pregnancy and post birth in fact an NHS poster states "at 20 weeks the baby started kicking, at 21 weeks so did the father". Women and men fret that there is not enough milk, that you can't quantify breast milk etc because like an insidious cancer baby milk companies have infected the subconcious of entire populations regarding this issue. It becomes a self fullfilling prophecy as women feel inadequate and stressed and they then find their milk supply affected.

Time to claim breast milk back for babies, for the environment and for the animals abused to provide formula (meat and battery egg products are often added to formula). There is absolutely no excuse to infect babies with genetically modified crap.

Lynn Sawyer

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  1. Forgot to mention — Lynn Sawyer