The Telegraph (UK) reports:
The owner of the Storchen restaurant in the exclusive Winterthur resort [in Switzerland] will improve his menu with local specialities such as meat stew and various soups and sauces containing at least 75 per cent of mother's milk.
The owner is advertising for suppliers, "who will receive just over three pounds for 14 ounces of their milk." Note that the milk "always needs to be mixed with a bit of whipped cream, in order to keep the consistency," says the owner.
Legal or not?, you might ask. The answer:
"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.
Thanks to my sister-in-law Hanah for the pointer.
Hmm, classifying humans as potted plants is obvious, a potted plant would also refer to a stoned narc, turning the entire populace, by definition, into government agents. Very cunning of those Swiss.
Considering that this post is about mother's milk, I think a very different Barr lawsuit is relevant.
As to the original post, I think the idea is Very Nice!
In the absence of any reasons to differentiate between the safety of lower primate and human milk, it seems fair to assume that the legislators meant to include humans in "primates," the biological category to which they already belong.
If you're really going for the epicurean/gourmand thing, wouldn't you want to ensure a supply that is not only free of disease, but from women who have a certain diet? The diets that animals are fed influence the taste of both their meat and other products (eggs and milk). Seems like quality control would be tough.
Just make sure it's free range Vegan breast milk.
Your response is asking whether it is legal? Isn't the real response "ewwwwwww, yuck"?
"You Left Me Breastless" by Ivana Snatchertitzoff.
I can also, however, make an admitidly poor ethical argument for excluding human providers from the general category of primates. Something like it has been determined by the legislature that primates are worth protecting from non-concentual milk extraction, but a human is capable of making such a choice.
As for the permitted/prohibited distinction, perhaps in the case of species not on either list the regulatory body has to make a determination, rather than look to statute.
So, any prohibition not limited to raw or uncooked dishes is based entirely upon a "yuck factor", or some social or even personal abhorrence entirely unrelated to actual physical health concerns.
Without addressing whether widespread personal squeamishness can be or should be a proper basis for any law, I think legislatures and courts should at least be required to state the real and honest reasons, and not rely on bogus "scientific reasons" to support such prohibitions.
You're absolutely right about the cooking, but we're (I suppose) talking about er, "dairy products", which are in many recipes not really cooked. Normally you would use milk from the grocery store which is pasteurized.
Maybe they could do that - make sure the human milk is pasteurized. Or maybe it already is? If so, then there maybe really isn't a good rational basis.
On the other hand - "human products" possess a sort of unique risk pathogen-wise, and truly 100% reliable destruction of pathogens requires much higher temperatures than normal cooking or pasteurization.
It would be great if someone chimed in on this thread who actually knew what they were talking about (it sure ain't me!).
I'm quite positive it's not one of them, because Switzerland is not an EU country.
Merely evolution anticipating the absolute fortune that would be available from pornography.
Breast bank milk is required to be pasteurized, which many believe will reduce the helpful effects of breast milk, so I know of a number of informal co-ops where lactating women share un-pasteurized breast milk with mothers who cannot breast feed or have inadequate milk supply. There have been friend-to-friend sharing for centuries, of course. And don't forget wet-nursing.
Actually, science indicates that prion diseases can be transmitted through cooked foods, being rather more stable than pathogens that actually need functioning DNA or RNA. I'm not sure whether prions end up in breast milk, though, and the diseases aren't terribly common, especially in women of lactating age.
That's good, because they're expensive, and I understand there's a waiting list at the car dealers for them.
Duh! Pardon me.
Anyway, the larger point is - surely there is some medically authoritative answer out there as to whether selling human milk actually poses a meaningful health risk? I just have no idea how to research it.
And as others have pointed out, it is also a conundrum that any sterilization procedure that can destroy pathogens also has a pretty good chance of destroying whatever special health benefits there are from human milk.