THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Picture yourself at a cow’s teat

Picture yourself at a cow’s teat

A news item picked up by papers around the world last week reported that a mother in the UK was still breastfeeding her five-year-old daughter. Bizarre – that was the inference, but feeding a human child with human breast milk is not bizarre at all.

What truly is bizarre, however, is adults breastfeeding from cows. Just because we pay someone to extract the milk mechanically and sell it to us in cartons, it doesn’t alter the fact that we are nursing from a cow.
Now picture this: You’re driving along a country road and you spy a smartly dressed couple clambering through a fence and heading towards a cow. 
The woman shoves the calf aside then crawls underneath the cow, grabs the udder and suckles. When she’s had her fill, the woman rolls from beneath the cow and her well-dressed partner takes her place.
On seeing this, would you think to yourself, “Oh, that couple are having a drink of milk”? Or would you stare in utter disbelief and think, “Those people must be crazy!” I imagine you’d think they were crazy, and you’d be right. 
It is crazy to suckle from a cow. No other animal on the planet suckles from a totally different species and no other animal continues to suckle right throughout adulthood.
Isn’t it time we took off our blinkers and recognised the absurdity and abnormality of this practice?
Jenny Moxham
Australia

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