The Rev. BigDumbChimp once again reminds me that, as soon as I think the world can’t get any stupider, there’s always one more example of stupid to trump all the others.

This time PETA gets to provide the humor:

WATERBURY, Vt. — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow’s milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman.

Now, Mrs. CyberLizard is a pretty hard-core lactivist, but I think even she would see the absolute stupidity of this.

Steve Higgins of the “Of Two Minds” blog was inspired by PETA to conceive of a fantastic new business plan:

I guess I can just open up a milking center at the mall so that I can get new mothers to stop by for a few minutes while I milk them. I could even offer them.. well lets see I could probably extract less than a gallon at a time…so at current rates – maybe offer them 10 cents for their time? I’ll bet I could get at least enough milk from 100 malls to maybe provide enough ice cream for 1 mall.

I love Ben & Jerry’s spokesman’s response: “We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.”

Here’s the brilliant letter PETA sent to Ben & Jerry’s:

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders

Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I’d like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry’s.

Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry’s replaced the cow’s milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits.

Using cow’s milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer’s health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America’s leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow’s milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America’s number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can’t produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can’t even turn around.

The breast is best! Won’t you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow’s milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman

Executive Vice President