back to article Drink rats' milk, suggests battling Heather Mills

Sir Paul McCartney’s ex Heather "Mucca" Mills yesterday used the launch of a planet-hugging billboard campaign to suggest that drinking rats' milk might save our beloved Earth from livestock-provoked apocalypse - much to the derision of UK tabloid The Sun. Mills was at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park to promote Vegetarians …

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  1. andy rock
    Stop

    i love the tag-line

    as always, my empathy for vegetarians is consumed by the self-righteousness of much of their propaganda. the fact that this loopy cow is associated with this campaign makes me immediately 'file' it under 'crazy twaddle'.

    my real point, though, is that cattle isn't destroying the earth, overpopulation is. plain and simple. if there were only, say, 500 million people living on this planet, it's a fair guess to say we could produce a 100 tonnes of CO2 per capita a year and be nowhere near the enviro-danger (i'm trademarking that phrase, btw) we're in now. it's all about scale, yunnow?

  2. Danny
    Dead Vulture

    Somebody need to go to Springfield

    Give Fat Tony the contract to supply the milk.

    Hypocritical cow, sitting in a gas guzzler while asking me to give up meat. Pass the bacon sarnies

  3. JP
    Coat

    Been watching too many Simpsons episodes...

    There was just a re-run of the episode where Homer becomes bodyguard to Mayor Quimby, so they bust the Mafia's rat milk factory...

    Doesn't mean they actually exist!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Another enviro-hypocrite

    Just like Price Feckin Charles. Wins an award for being green, flies to New York to collect it (occupying the entire business and first class section of a jumbo with his entourage).

    XFM radio in London had some great ideas this morning about how to get the milk out of the rats. They agreed that attaching little milking machines to them was probably impractical, so they suggested freezing the rats, then smashing them with a hammer to reveal a little frozen milk nodule (for want of a better term).

    I'm really looking forward to all the Reg readers' alternative techniques...

  5. Ozimandius

    Dog's Milk?

    Reminded me of Red Dwarf:

    Holly: "We ran out of milk yonks ago - we're on the emergency backup supplies now, Dog's Milk!"

    Lister: "DOGS MILK!"

    Holly: "Nothing wrong with dog's milk - full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly. Lasts longer than any type of milk, dog's milk."

    Lister: "Why?"'

    Holly: "No bugger'll drink it.......... plus the advantage of dog's milk is that when it goes off it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh!"

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Agree with andy rock

    Lets remove the biggest single livestock type. Suicide pills ready everyone?

  7. Richard Waterhouse
    Thumb Up

    What She Really Meant.

    Save the world, eat vegetarians.

  8. Andy Baker
    Coat

    Stupid Cow

    This could be good news... it might mean that they're making a new series of Brasseye and this is a Chris Morris wind up.

  9. Dan
    Thumb Down

    that fucking woman

    has she never heard of the phrase "dignified silence"?

  10. thefutureboy

    Red Dwarf...

    Lister: What kind of milk are we using now?

    Holly: Emergency back-up supply. We're on the dog's milk.

    Lister, staring at his cup of tea. Swallows: Dog's milk?!

    Holly: Nothing wrong with dog's milk. Full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly. Lasts longer than any other type of milk, dog's milk.

    Lister: Why?

    Holly: No bugger'll drink it. Plus the advantage of dog's milk is when it goes off it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh.

    Lister: Why didn't you tell me, Holly?!

    Holly: What, and spoil your tea?

  11. craig chester
    Coat

    Dog's Milk

    Red Dwarf Series One

    Holly said..."Dog's milk lasts longer than any other kind of milk"

    Lister... "Why's that?"

    Holly ... "Because no bugger will drink it"

    Case rested and off to the cloak room...

  12. TeeCee Gold badge
    Flame

    Rat's milk???????????

    'cos of course she's, like, tried it and found it gooood, hasn't she. No?

    Chalk up another entry in the Vegan=Loony list.

    Why bother to take the piss when they're so bloody good at doing it themselves? Choosing Lady Teapot as your spokesthing is hardly the act of a sane group for a start.

  13. Lloyd
    Coat

    What an ego

    When asked how exactly one milks rats, Miss Mills responded that she usually took them to court and attempted to fleece them for eveything they were worth.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Spit roast the wench

    Flesh tastes good. Overpopulation wrecks the environment.

    Solution: cannibalism.

    I wonder whether Heather's leg comes with a rotisserie adaptor?

    John

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Pull the udder one...

    ...it's made of wood.

  16. Rogier de Groot
    Pirate

    Natural Selection, where are you?

    All those damn vegans are eating to few calories to feul their brains, so how will it take for natural selection to rid us all of their damn BS?

  17. This post has been deleted by its author

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    She may be on to something...

    but she just hasn't thought it through.

    There's a much better supply source, and it will provide a welcome incentive for moms to stay home with their kids at the same time.

    Human breast milk.

    (Gotta go - plane to catch)

  19. Tom
    Go

    livestock

    If everyone got their milk from one or more of the other 25 alternatives to cows, surely we'd need far more fo those animals.

    This calls for a graph of environmental damage per litre of milk for each animal type.

  20. Risky
    Paris Hilton

    Dumbing Down

    Can El Reg cease reporting this ridiculous woman's babbling and return to reporting on Paris Hilton, to restore the intellectual level here.

  21. Gilbert Wham

    That poster...

    ...Looks like a picture of the devastation caused by the hideous Mills demon as it rampages across the land.

  22. Alan Parsons
    Stop

    25 Alternatives

    I'm a vegetarian. And although I miss some aspects of eating meat (more texture than taste - it's hard to find stuff to actually chew when you're a veggie) I know that I won't go back to eating meat. But I just couldn't give up milk. All these '25 alternatives' taste horrific and soy/rice milk just doesn't have the viscosity (sp?) of even semi skimmed. On top of that, for me, the universe would lose all purpose without cheese.

    <sarcasm>Additionally I'm really pleased that organisations like Viva can hire nutters to help the world see that all of us vegetarians are grass munching, tree hugging, eco warriors with a penchant for telling ather people what to eat.</sarcasm>

  23. Youngdog
    Mars

    Paul McCartney.....

    ...has broken his dignified silence to comment that he thinks that Heather maybe 'unbalanced'

    He goes on to say sliding a couple of beermats under her left foot usually helps

    IF YOU LAUGHED AT THAT THEN SHAME ON YOU - YOU ARE A WICKED, WICKED PERSON!

    I think her latest publicist watched the same Simpsons episode as JP and is pulling her leg - DOH! THAT PUN WAS NOT INTENTIONAL - STOP GIGGLING AT THE BACK!

  24. Bob Kentridge

    Rat milking

    Been done....

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8558831&dopt=Abstract

  25. Rogier de Groot
    Pirate

    It's natural selection time

    Wasn't there a story a while ago about a bunch of vegan's who inflicted their insane diet on their newborn? And got convicted after it died of malnutrition? So I've gotta ask; how long will it take natural selection to rid the world of all of these idiots?

    Side note: that woman who heads PETA had herself sterilised right? Sounds like a good candidate for a Darwin Award - helping to keep our gene pool clean.

  26. sabroni Silver badge
    Happy

    thank god she said something stupid

    so we can all go on eating meat and ignore that stupid UN report!

  27. Paul Anderson

    Barmy

    I'm not an expert in PR, but what group on earth would want to use Heather Mills as a spokesperson right now ?

  28. Sam
    Coat

    Title

    Perv voice; "Lovely. Milky, milky."

  29. Karl Lattimer

    A few points about these hippies

    1) There isn't enough actual land to feed the world by plant mass alone, durr, that's why animals are an important part of our diet.

    2) Palm oil and soya production are two of the largest contributers to greenhouse gasses, they think meat is murder justifies them killing my planet?

    3) WE HAVE CANINE TEETH! WHICH MAKES US CARNIVORES!

    4) My species has spent a hundred thousand years getting to the top of the food chain, bring out the steak!

    Bloody hippies.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Hysteria

    /rant

    Danger! Terrorism/global warming (delete as appropriate) is going to kill us all unless you give up civil liberties the way the government wants you to, eat the way the crazy vegans want you to, work/travel/live the way the anti-capitalists want you to...

    F*** off! My new sports coupe pollutes nothing like all the crap packaging encasing everything I buy, or the dirty low-grade diesel running the freight liners, or the socially and environmentally irresponsible practices indulged in to dispose of unwanted company waste, or all the other ridiculous crap produced by mad bureaucracies the world over. Never mind me changing my lifestyle - you're all so fond of referring to me as a 'consumer', yet the stuff I consume is provided by same governments and corporations - get your own house in order!

    /end rant

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    She may be able to milk rats...

    ... based on her current success with milking a Beatle.

  32. Ian Hunter
    Coat

    Mills

    Surely this proves that she is indeed a fantasist?

    Anyway, if she wants to be that eco friendly, why doesn't she get rid of her plane?

    Just use Immac on the other leg.

    Coat GET!

  33. James

    Not surprised she kept the engine running

    She probably wanted to keep the heater on - it was frickin' freezing yesterday. Unseasonably cool, one might even say. The kind of cold you might have if the gulf stream's effect was being lessened as its northern terminus is swamped with freshwater from glacial melt, say. The kind of glacial melt you get when people burn hydrocarbons, for instance. Like when they leave their pointless urban 4x4 running needlessly so it's not cold when they get into it. Nice one, Mills.

  34. Dan
    Happy

    @ Youngdog

    Laugh?! I nearly fell off my chair!

    (Only afterwards did I reach the next line - that's not fair!)

  35. Mountford D

    Monterey Jack cheese

    Before Wikipedia and the 'net, there was a semi-joke local urban legend going round that Monterey Jack cheese was really made from rabbit milk (Jack rabbit). Perhaps Heather had heard that too.

  36. SImon Hobson Bronze badge
    Pirate

    But what they conveniently ignore ...

    ... is the fact that if we all gave up meat and ate the vegetation ourselves then ... we would simply all be gasbags ourselves and still produce the methane ! <paarp>

  37. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Hmm... rats milk?

    Milking rats is going to be no different to milking a cow from a vegetarians point of view. I personally don't want to see rat farms (I'm sure they already exist)

    I'll rather stick with Soya Milk.

    Also - what was the IT angle on this one?

  38. sabroni Silver badge
    Heart

    @ Karl Latimer...

    think it through mate. Animals eat plant food and produce more food than they've eaten? I was told 7lbs of veggie protein = 1lb of meat protein (though that was by some crazy vegetarian organisation, so.....). Sounds like you've got some magic animals there......

    And carnivores can't survive on vegetable matter, that's why I'm dead! Are you sure you're not an omnivore.....

  39. Paolo
    Pirate

    E eat meat to help the environment

    I eat meat, so we can kill some cow and remove it from the planet, so it stops polluting.

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Looks like Ms Mills has hit a nerve here....

    Re: overpopulation. I believe that Mr Jonathan Swift has a modest proposal to solve this particular problem.

  41. Tawakalna
    Joke

    rat's milk?

    wot, and end up like her? I think not! flippin' crackpot.

    My ferret milk factory works perfectly well thank you.

  42. James

    Bit of a cruel poster though

    Obviously Sir Paul's nicked her leg and made her crawl across a burning field to get it back! And in such a nouse blouse too...

  43. Barry
    Stop

    Milk a rat?

    You're going to need very small hands indeed, to milk a rat.

  44. Obtuse
    Unhappy

    Bleedin' loonies

    I agree entirely with Alan Parsons, these lunatics are giving normal vegetarians a bad name with their dogmatic scaremongering. Some of us just don't eat meat because we don't want to, and couldn't care less about what anyone else shoves in their gob.

    Karl Lattimer though, in reference to their not being enough land mass to support the human race through vegetables/cereals/pulses/whatever, what do you think the animals eat in the first place? Do they magically produce more nutrition than they take in?

    Don't worry though, hippies piss me off too.

  45. Joe

    @ Youngdog et al

    God, that felt good. Haven't laughed like that for too long.

    Maybe we should think about milking methane from those bovine and other ruminant quadrupeds responsible for producing all this hot air and leave the rats alone? That way people like Heather can power her 4x4s, the rest of us can continue to enjoy nice tasting milk with our real 'english' tea and those who want to can gorge on burgers till they're too obese and unfit to work.

    Realising there may be other more practical considerations for hooking up every arsehole to the national grid, I propose plugging in Heather instead. I'm sure there's plenty enough acid left over from her acrimonious divorce to power this planet for centuries. We could use such celebrities as Hilton and Mill's in series. Hmm. Bono and Bob. Brad and Angelina. Madonna and Guy. The list is endless...

  46. David Evans

    @sabroni

    Ah, the old "7lbs of veg = 1lb of animal" bit . Classic veggie nonsense. Cows eat grass. We don't. Therefore its not exactly straightforward to bypass the cow. Plus, the energy stored in the animal (proteins and fats) is far more valuable to humans than the raw vegetable matter, even if we could eat it, so weight for weight, you need to eat less meat than veg to survive.

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Why not...

    ...milk humans? I mean look at it, all those unemployed chavettes are permapregnant anyway, so why not solve two problems in one go?

    Jokes aside, I am completely with the comments stating overpopulation as the true problem. We're omnivores, and we're for the most part top of the food chain and the dominant species at this time because of that. There's simply too many of us. Bring in the meteor.

  48. Justin Finkelstein
    Alert

    It's not just about greenhouse gasses, it's about water.

    What's worse than greenhouse gasses? People unable to drink because their livestock are using up all the available drinking water.

    In an article in New Scientist magazine, a study points out that to make your average burger takes up 11,000 litres of water.

    More details:

    http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg18925401.500-earth-the-parched-planet.html

  49. Peter Fielden-Weston
    Unhappy

    Slap me If I'm Stupid, but...

    You get milk from nursing animals right?

    Therefore to get rats/dogs/rabbits milk the rat/dog/rabbit has just had to have given birth right?

    So what are we going to do with the massive population explosion of rats, dogs, rabbits etc?

    Kill them at birth? Read the book, seen the film, now eat the stew?

    Look like the food faddies haven't thought this one through properly. But since when did that stop any sort of fanatic?

    Bloody idiots.

  50. sabroni Silver badge
    Heart

    @ David Evans

    Classic indeed! I'm not sure it's quite so straightforward though, aren't farm animals fed on a number of foodstuffs? (except for anchor cows obviously).

    I don't know, I tend to avoid veggie/meat eater arguments but there seemed to be such a lot of postings from meat eaters I thought I better chime in.

    ooh, just been poking around wikipedia (yeah, I know, but sources are listed) and found this:

    "According to the USDA (united states department of agriculture), growing crops for farm animals requires nearly half of the U.S. water supply and 80% of its agricultural land."

    So maybe we could grow something other than grass on that 80%?

  51. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    can't win

    So what happens if we stop eating meat:

    Farmers aren't going to keep livestock any more if there's no market for it. So before you know it, the cow/pig/sheep is going to be rapidly dwindling in numbers, and joining the endangered species list. Now those same tree-hugging bunny-lovers will be complaining how we're allowing yet more species go extinct.

    Just face facts. Either a cow is edible, or extinct.

    Can someone please change the rules to reflect this so we can win occasionally? Please?

  52. HFoster
    Coat

    Taxi!

    Ms Mills has to be back in the ward by 3pm.

  53. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @David Evans & @Karl Lattimer

    Uh, that's them *lucky* cows you're thinking about. What's in cattle feed? Well, when it contains plant stuff _at all_ (instead of ground up bits of other animals) then it contains soy beans, which are something we can, and do, eat.

    The problem is that even growing grass requires, say, cleared land in places like Brazil which used to be forested and soaking up a fare bit of carbon. So there is, in fact, a direct link between eating meat, raising cows, and global warming. You would support more people using less land if you cut out the bit where cows chewed it first. I'm not saying that everyone *should* be veggie (I enjoy the odd bit of fish or meat a couple of times a month), but it's absolutely *is* a more efficient use of resources.

    And on to Karl...

    > 1) There isn't enough actual land to feed the world by plant mass alone, durr, that's why animals are an important part of our diet.

    So by your logic cows somehow create more energy than they take in (which would be the only way that they could provide more nutrition than the plants they eat)... Or they feast off cosmic rays or something? Hello?

    > 2) Palm oil and soya production are two of the largest contributers to greenhouse gasses, they think meat is murder justifies them killing my planet?

    The issue with palm oil is that it's being used in cars as a fuel additive, not consumed by hordes of hungry vegetarians. Soya beans are used as an additive in feed for... animals (because they're so nutritious), so I'm afraid that those two arguments are completely irrelevant. If anything they suggest that we should all be bicycle- and train-riding vegetarians.

    3) WE HAVE CANINE TEETH! WHICH MAKES US CARNIVORES!

    And we also have flat teeth at the back of our mouths. This doesn't make us vegetarians, it makes us OMNIVORES. Look it up.

    4) My species has spent a hundred thousand years getting to the top of the food chain, bring out the steak!

    Can't argue with that one.

  54. Law
    Paris Hilton

    wow.... just wow

    With all the examples of cows milk replacement she has in the world, she smashes herself in the face by suggesting rats milk?! *claps... slowly* Bravo ho.... bravo.

    Incidently, I'm pretty much milk free... I'm lactose intollerant, so I use unsweetened soya milk, not quite the same as old fashioned milk - but alot of the time it's nicer... like on cerial. Tastes crap in tea tho..... can't stand the sweetened versions at all either (which is the norm on shelves really).

    So milk isnt a big deal.... but asking me to give up eating meat.... I say she has gone too far... back in the day she would have burned at the stake in an old-fashioned witching.... *stares thoughtfully into the distance* sigh..... if only....

  55. Sillyfellow

    yeah, sure.

    two things:

    1. i'd like to see Heather drink some 'freshly squeezed' rats milk, before she tells us we should drink it. some chance.. i'll bet she hasn't and won't go near the stuff..

    and

    2. i'd like to remind all vegeterians and vegans that plants are alive!

    no life is less important than any other life. nuff said!

    ... i do however respect where they're comming from.

    i simply accept that i am an animal (and carnivore as nature made me) who knows that any life exists at the expense of other life.

    besides i LOVE bacon sarnies.. mmmmmm.

  56. Bob C
    Boffin

    Violate the laws of physics. Save the planet.

    What the concept of switching to rat or dog milk fails to address is that a unit volume of ANY milk takes more energy to produce than is gained. So instead of giant farms of cow grain, with huge ponds of manure, a dog milk economy will require huge kibble factories and create mountains of dog poop. And at least cow poop can be recycled as fertilizer. Dog poop is, well, shall we say, a significant materials handling problem.

  57. GrahamT
    Boffin

    Humans are omnivores

    We have canine teeth and incisors and molars, and our digestive systems can handle meat and veg. Eating just meat (see Supersize Me) or just veg is unbalanced. Maybe our balance in the west is off and we do eat too much meat, but going vegan (or carniverous) is not a realistic option, unless we want to see widespread malnutrition and rickets again. Some vitamins and minerals are difficult to find in vegatables, (vitamin D) some are difficult to find in meat (vitamin C)

    A balanced diet keeps you healthy, is what nutritionists have been saying for years. Children of vegans tend to be underweight for age, and several IQ points behind their omniverous peers. Children raised on burgers become obese and attention deficit occurs.

    However as one of the largest populations in the world (China, Japan, etc) doesn't drink milk, and another (India) doesn't eat much meat (but still has lots of cows producing methane) it is down to Europe and NA to change.

    I'm begining to think Mills needs help, not criticism- her rantings sound more and more crazy, not the considered comments of a right thinking person. Any good work she has done for mine victims and amputees is being completely overshadowed.

    Re: Human milk - previous commentators show a misunderstanding of lactation. Once lactation starts, which usually requires the birth of a child, but not always, it will continue while milk is being taken. Some cultures breast feed children for up to 5 years. You don't need constant childbirth for constant lactation. The only thing stopping commercial human milk production is the "yuck" factor - and apparently you can't make cheese with it.

  58. b166er

    Aarf!

    What a joke, if we got all the milk we consume from rats, there would need to be millions of the buggers running around. Will they still agree when the plague returns?

    On Sir Paul's divorce;

    Interviewer: So, do you think you'll be going down on one knee again at any time in the future?

    Sir Paul: I'd rather you called her Heather

    I eat meat (as mentioned above, it's hard to get enough protein/texture from vegetarian diets), I don't like the way animals are treated so I eat organic meat in the hope that these animals have a peaceful existence (with the exception of their death). I eat meat 3 times a week (total), however I don't drink milk ;p. Other animals eat animals. I like vegetarians. Those who really disagree with meat-eating, are hopefully boycotting the supermarkets/fast food 'restaurants'.

    <opinion>

    Most people who don't do a manual job, only need to eat meat once or twice a week, however most people are used to eating meat everyday. It takes some effort to learn new recipes that don't involve meat. I find it hilarious, that many people who work in offices are also trying to lose weight! We are conditioned to eat meat too often and it's unnecessary, but at the same time big business and apparently, bad for the environment.

    </opinion>

  59. C Wall

    Giant Rats

    Giant, genetically modified rats, could use existing cow milking machines.

  60. sabroni Silver badge
    Heart

    @GrahamT

    Vegan children are small and stupid!? Could you back that up with some sources? Sounds like the sort of stuff I was getting told 25 years ago (but then, as I mentioned before, I am dead, so maybe there's something in it.......)

  61. Sam
    Coat

    She's radio rental

    Definitely out there.

    Oh, and if you ever wondered how

    you get triangles from a cow,

    you need butter milk and cheese,

    and an equilateral chain saw.

    Ok, I'll fuck off.

  62. A J Stiles
    Stop

    Obviously deranged

    * Any scientist doing a comparison of how much you have to feed an animal to how much food you get out of it, if they were a real scientist, would be weighing things in kilograms. Not pounds. So the quote above is evidently not from a scientist.

    * Human beings have a rapid digestive transit (try eating sweetcorn sometime and timing how long it takes to come through) and three different types of teeth, suggesting that we are adapted to eat meat. We do not have the ability to decompose cellulose. (Raw vegetables contain more nutrients than cooked vegetables, but locked behind a cell wall they are unavailable and pass through the body undigested.) This also suggests that humans are adapted for a meat-based diet. However, most human beings have the ability to manufacture taurine (a protein fragment which does not occur in any plant) from other proteins, suggesting that we are adapted to survive for at least some stretch of time on a vegetarian diet. (We've all seen counter-examples with their pale, taut skin and deteriorating eyesight. All members of the cat family, from pet kittens through lynxes and pumas to lions and tigers, are unable to manufacture taurine, and will go blind and die in screaming agony if fed an exclusively vegetarian diet.) The weaker acidity of our gastric fluid compared to other predators (1-2 pH points higher than a dog, i.e. 10 to 100 times weaker) might be explained by years of cooking our food, meaning the stomach acid has less work to do.

    * You are never, ever going to be able to get someone who is looking for an argument to agree with you. No doubt in a hundred years' time there will be a "mineralism" movement, believing that killing plants for food is wrong.

    * Many vegetarians I have met have few to no qualms about killing unborn human beings -- unlike many death penalty supporters I have met.

  63. John Savard

    She's partly right

    On the one hand, humans need eight essential amino acids, not five. So it's difficult to eat a strictly vegetarian healthy diet.

    And, it's true that if there were fewer people around, we wouldn't have to worry about eating meat. But there aren't fewer people around: in fact, there are lots of extra people around who still aren't able to afford roast beef every Sunday and drive a car.

    So, one does have to accept that eating meat leads to environmental problems if there would be environmental problems if, tomorrow, everyone in the whole world were to be able to eat the same way we do in Europe and North America. Growing plants people can eat directly is more efficient than converting them through animals.

    But the obvious solution is to build enough nuclear power plants to recover the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, because no matter how many nuclear power plants you build, they don't produce greenhouse gases.

  64. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Land use

    Animals can be farmed on land which would not yield human-edible crops at useful levels. Grow wheat on the Welsh hills? Potatoes on the flood plain of the Lune?

    Felling rainforest to provide Beef grazing is a Bad Thing.

    Letting goats eat all the green stuff at the edge of deserts is a Bad Thing.

    I don't know how productive the Argentinian ranches would be if they were turned over to arable food production. And I'm suspicious that neither do the anti-meat activists.

    And anyway, of God (or the Spaghetti Monster) didn't mean us to eat animals, why did She make them out of meat?

  65. harry wolf
    Paris Hilton

    omnivores

    humans are omnivorous, so a SMALL amount of meat is normal. Trouble is, the USA eats meat 400 times a day and the UK is going the same way - easy solution: only eat the meat that your country produces - no imported flesh allowed.

    Or maybe we should catch the methane gases produced and use them to power 4x4's etc.

    Then we could save all the endangered oil fields.

    Did you know that by 2100 there will be NO oil fields left? All the animals that need oil fields to survive will be extinct.

    Oh.

  66. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    It's all about efficiency

    Evolution is a wonderful thing but it creates remarkable specialization in lots of areas.

    Cows are very efficient in turning vegetable matter into more cow, further, they are bred over thousands of years and selected for their nutritious value both in meat and milk. Digesting meat is far less energy intensive for certain processes for humans (protein conversion is one of them I believe) than trying to gain the same sustenence from grasses, Ultimately we get more more energy per kilo of cow than an equivilent amount of vegetable matter eaten directly, not because there's more energy in the same mass, but because our bodies have to work less hard to gain what energy IS available.

    Sidenote: Dogs and cats are actually carnivores and given a choice will balance on a diet that relies extremely heavily (but not 100% exclusively) on meat. Further, I vaguely remember something about carnivore milk not being nutritious to humans, something to do with not enough lipids or something. Rat milk *might* be sustaining but when it takes a farm of several hundred rats, all eating, drinking and excreting and needing to be kept healthy to generate enough milk for a single family's needs, it becomes cheaper and more energy and resource efficient to simply milk and eat the cow.

    Omnivores have the best of both worlds with the detriment of having a digestive system that is inefficient.

    Humans have evolved to be omnivores and we are healthiest when we have a balance between animal and vegetable. The optimal balance probably varies from person to person which only confuses things further. This is the way things are and all the wishful thinking or tree hugging or pretty faces with too much agenda and not enough education or sense in the world still won't change the facts.

    Survival of the fittest and I'd like a salad and a glass of milk with that.

  67. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    @ GrahamT

    I'm well aware of how lactation works, it just made a better joke that way ;)

    Keep on milkin'!

    And... thinking about the rats... one could just keep them at home, and once you feel like milk, you just grab one... and suck it. Warm and fresh. "Darling, could you drop by the supermarket on the way home and grab a couple of rats? We're all out of milk!"

  68. Luther Blissett

    Would you let her be the mother of your children?

    Can't believe no-one has expressed an opinion on this - maybe you're all agnostic. Or shape-shifting lizards.

  69. laird cummings

    A not so modest proposal...

    It's time we nuked the planet to save the planet.

    Yup, that's right. Bomb all the large population centers. We can nuke ourselves or trade bombs with our favorite 'hate' country, whichever makes people happiest (for the remainder of their soon-to-be-snuffed lives), and donate a few spare thermonukes to those populous countries what haven't yet managed to pull some bombs out of their bums.

    It's a multi-fold winner, I'm telling ya! Population burden on the planet suddenly reduced, many of the most polluting industries either wiped off the face of the planet, or effectively dead anyway as the population centers they served are eliminated... Loss of infrastructure leading to mass starvation, leading to further reduction in population... Smoke from the firestorms consuming our erstwhile city centers will blanket the globe and knock a few points off the thermometer for a couple years, allowing the icecaps to recover, thus increasing planetary albedo and resetting the thermal cycle at the poles...

    It's a winner all the way around! Well, except for those billion or so people whom snuff it, of course. But they'll be dead, so can't complain.

    Right then. Who has me lovely coat with the wrap-around sleves?

  70. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Boy, THAT's gotta hurt!

    According to Viva!, livestock are "the second biggest cause of greenhouse gases at 18 per cent – compared to 13.5 per cent from all the world’s different modes of transport combined"

    So, basically, they're agreeing with what they mocked Ronald Reagan for, twenty-something years ago, when he warned that cows produced more greenhouse gases than cars did.

    The irony is almost as delicious as the steak!

    BTW - I'm assuming that Ms Mills' "suggestion" of alternative milk sources was intended as some sort of feeble joke since - if she was actually serious - presumably SOMEONE would have mentioned to her that dogs and cats actually need to eat MEAT to produce their milk, making it a LESS efficient source...

  71. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    @ GrahamT

    I'm well aware of how lactation works, it just made a better joke that way ;)

    Keep on milkin'!

    And... thinking about the rats... one could just keep them at home, and once you feel like milk, you just grab one... and suck it. Warm and fresh. "Darling, could you drop by the supermarket on the way home and grab a couple of rats? We're all out of milk!"

  72. Dan
    Dead Vulture

    Outdone

    She's just trying to outdo Paul's ex-wife Linda, she was vegetarian, so Heather's gotta be vegan.

    I'm surprised charities and campaigns are still using her, whenever she opens her mouth these days people instantly assume she's talking twaddle whatever she might saying.

  73. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Ratz

    Can't say as I've drunk rat milk, but I've eaten rat.

    Not bad, braised with chille and peanut sauce.

    Just to note:

    1. there are too many of us for the resources of the planet. Lotsa multiplyin'

    but no enough "goin' forth" seems to be the problem.

    2. the Universe is not modelled on "sustainability" or any other such human delusion.

    3. the quality of life enjoyed by animals contributes directly to the quality of

    meat's nutritional value and taste. Heather could feed a dozen starvin' for

    weeks, despite the missin' gam.

    4. It don't taste much like pig More like monkey.

    5. most vegans I've met are more'n a few bricks short of a full load. Whether

    this is cause or effect I am unsure, but their toddlers tend to filch meat at

    every op.

    6. They don't call me a "Black !@#$" 'cause of my skin ;-)

    ~D

  74. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    She still here?

    WTF? After her successful gold digging marriage and Mackers temporary insanity i thought our efficient press had managed to force her out the country but i see she is back!

    I am personally not in favour of paparazzi and media intrusiveness into celebs when for example more important things like war are happening but in her case i make an exception.

    Cant she go into rehab, the US or just into rich obscurity or something as having her lecture me on eco standards is like Pol Pot giving me good governance advice.

  75. rasputinsDog
    Jobs Horns

    Overpopulation Solved

    If human overpopulation is the cause of the catastrophic global warming crisis myth, then maybe we should stop trying to cure diseases and prevent accidental deaths. Reintroducing the bubonic plague couldn't hurt either!

    Hey global warming isn't all bad. I'm sitting on some lovely future ocean front property in Iowa. Hurray for rising sea levels! Fucking Floridians have had good for too long.

  76. Ron Christian

    celebs make poor spokescreatures

    Just goes to show, a Cause is in trouble when they choose a model or starlet as a spokescreature, because they so often blow the press conference. You tend to get idiocy like Jessica Simpson's "chicken of the sea" epiphany, Barbara Streisand's blog, or, well, this.

    We should know by now that just being a well known face, or arm ornament to someone famous, doesn't mean you have a thought in your head. (The reverse is more likely true.) Having spokesfluff represent political causes is inherently risky.

  77. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Globalisation and the rat milk sector

    I think rat milk may be another industry to benefit from regulatory competition, i.e. lower standards abroad.

    I recently heard an anecdote about the earlier industry of mouse serum, pioneered by a few US biotechs in the 90's who were raising large colonies of mice and tapping them for a few mls of blood serum for use in drug development assays. They were wiped out when a competitor arrived at 1/10th the price. It turned out the price difference was because the competitor farmed the mice in China - and harvested the serum by putting the mice in the blender and straining! (that's how it was told to me, although I suspect they just decapitated them and strained the run-off, rather than break-up the tissues. Either way, not quite as pure but a lot simpler than murine phlebotomy!)

  78. Jon Tocker

    I love vegetarians and vegans

    with a few seasonal vegetables and a decent chutney sauce.

    Seriously though, it's always handy to know that if we ever get a global famine there are people around who have voluntarily placed themselves lower in the food chain than the rest of us.

    Vegetarian Cooking: "First catch your vegetarian..."

    @ Lloyd and Evil Graham: Brilliant!

    Youngdog, you ought to be ashamed, making me nearly spit my latte all over my computer screen.

    Why am I not surprised at all the Red Dwarf quotes? Probably because it was the first thing to cross my mind as well, when I saw dog's milk listed as an alternative.

    OK, so we get rid of the dairy farms and start rat farms instead - I gather Miss Mills, towering intellect that she is, has already done all the research and determined that rats (while eating a strictly vegetarian diet) are more efficient milk producers than cows and we would not need to use as much pasture to produce the same volume of milk. Hmmmm?

    Nope, didn't really think so. Love the dog/cat milk plan, instead of getting the cows to eat grass to produce milk, we could get the cows eating grass to become pet food so we can feed the dogs and cats who eat grass. Bound to be more efficient, right?

    When it comes to Miss Mills and other frothing-at-the-mouth "meat is murder" loonies, I look to the words of "Speaker-to-animals" (later, "Chmee") who asked "How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a blade of grass?" and later said "Ah, so that is an example of the intelligence used to sneak up on a blade of grass."

    Thank you, Heather, for showing the world exactly how much intellect is required to sneak up on a blade of grass.

    (And thank you, Larry Niven, for Chmee)

  79. Jonathan Lancaster

    Methods of rat milk collection

    For the benefit of those without journal subscriptions:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8558831&dopt=Abstract

    Methods considered include hand milking, and euthanising pups to steal the milk from their stomachs. They eventually settled on using 'soft moulded silicone suction cups' connected to a vacuum pump. The two upper thoratic nipples proved easiest to milk, whereas the other four had too much loose skin around them, making it difficult to get an air tight seal. Proficient milkers were able to achieve similar results from all nipples with practice, however, so there is hope yet. 'The skill in the rat milking procedure was to ensure a constant flow of milk, by pulsing the vacuum and using a gentle 'milking' technique.' This lead to approx. 1.5ml of milk being collected at a time from a single dam.

    The original article even has fun pictures!

    Reference-

    Practical aspects of milk collection in the rat

    C. T. Rodgers

    Safety of Medicines, ZENECA Pharmaceuticals, Mereside, Alderley Park, Macclesfield, Cheshire

    SK10 4TG, UK

  80. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Internet warriors

    Nice to see the register - wannabe alt media - regurgitating more disinformation.

    A simple comment taken out of context embellished and used yet again as an attack on an individual no one knows yet everyone has an opinion on.

    Really what are any of you achieving with your intense hatred? do you know her? Do you have facts regarding her life outside of media suggestion? the answer is without question no.

    I am not going to go through the allegations thrown at this particular individual but it is trivial to see that its all bulls**t, I urge you all to try. Find some verifiable evidence to backup any of the petty prejudiced allegations that are thrown around. Of course facts are tough to come by...

    But then again maybe some will recognise it's firstly none of your f**king business and secondly WHO GIVES A S**T IT'S NOT YOUR LIFE. Forget hers and start living your own you f**king drones.

    Attacking again and again regurgitating the same old crap spoon fed to you by the media, it's a disgusting sham that so much hate can be spewed by so many uninformed idiots.

    Please media gods tell me what to think, whom must I hate this week. I must know for my mind does not function independently any more, feed me with your hate.

  81. Colin Sharples
    Flame

    Vegetarians are just picking on plants

    I've got no problem with someone being a vego because it's healthier, or they just don't like meat. What really fucks me off is when they try to take the moral high ground and tell you you're a bad person for eating meat. Meat is murder? What the fuck do you think eating plants is, then? Do the plants go on living happy little lives in your stomach? NO, they die. They go from being alive plants to being dead plants. And it doesn't matter that plants don't have a brain, as they have been shown to produce electrical signals in response to wounds that look exactly like nerve impulses in animals, only several orders of magnitude slower. Who is to say that a tomato plant doesn't feel pain when you pick a tomato? Certainly not Ms Mills, that's for sure. It makes me so angry, I'm going to throw the phone down >:-|

  82. Tim Brown

    What an utter...

    Heather Mills: proof that cows are mad.

  83. lglethal Silver badge
    Joke

    And how long before...

    the animal liberationists would be up in arms about "cruelty to rats", and "keeping rats in cages for milking is murder", "Battery farm Rats are people too"... etc...

  84. Haku

    @Tim Brown

    Heather Mills cannot possibly have mad cow disease because it's an infectious disease of the brain.

  85. Ian
    Flame

    Title

    Bloody hell, don't you lot have jobs or anything?

    Overpopulation, its the thing. If thee were fewer of us we could do whatever we like. Oh, we do...

  86. Mr Larrington
    Mars

    @Anonymous Coward

    Re $DEITY making animals out of meat - true in most cases, but certain members of the human race appear to be made of wood, damp cardboard or those little foam packing pellets.

    The woman is as mad as three badgers and wnats badly to be deported to rural Neptune. Preferably in at least three separate crates.

  87. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Brilliant Idea!

    1st - Kill off all the livestock, this way we'll save 18% of greenhouse emissions and if we are all vegan we dont need them anymore

    2nd - Place thousands of rats into the fields, that will be nice. Good luck to the farmers for milking them though

    3rd - Just wait until all human dies cause of illnesses spreading with the new Mills plague

  88. David Lloyd
    Boffin

    Learn some basic science before making idiots of yourselves

    The shocking ignorance of the people posting on this comment blows my mind. It wouldn't be so bad if it was the bbc website, but you muppets are supposed to know something about technology and therefore science.

    You may have heard about this thing called energy. Fantastic stuff, you can use it to run machines like computers (finally, an IT angle to this otherwise mindless topic), cars or your body. Thermodynamics is the thing which tells you how it all fits together.

    Now a decent animal body can convert energy with pretty poor efficiency. I believe a pig needs to consume about 7 times the food (energy) (not sure of that number, know it is > 2) you or I can extract from said pig when we eat it. Vegetarianism is about cutting out the middle man (or pig) and using the raw plant energy more efficiently, where possible. Fair enough to eat a sheep (or even better venison) from some beautiful Welsh or Scottish upland. What else were we going to do with the space? Some fish is even more efficient (just forget about farmed salmon, it's carnivorous). I approach this as a technical problem of efficiency, so flesh sourced from otherwise 'useless' space (from a farming or aquaculture perspective) is fine.

    Yes, the population is too large. What in the name of Jobs are you going to do about it? If your answer is to reduce the population from 6 billion to 500 million before we see an ecological BSOD then you are talking about genocide! We or have to consume less farmed meat. Or else stop wasting energy running pointless websites where irate people can vent their frustrations. Oh wait a second... <click>

  89. Chris Bradshaw
    Boffin

    What to do with all the cows?

    Since we're not going to eat them (being vegan), and it would certainly be against the new moral code to just kill them all out of hand, will we just let them live? They will produce methane anyway, whether we milk them or not...

    A better solution: develop a cow fart harvester, along with a small compressor and tank, presumably to be attached to the cow's rump. Voila - meat for non-vegans, milk and cheese for vegetarians, and Ms. Mills' car can be converted to run on the methane... I believe the biological term for this is symbiosis :-)

  90. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Does she even know what a vegan is ?

    A vegan will not use ANY animal for food, clothing, etc. Thats ANY animal. Yes Heather, a rat is still an animal. Silly Cow.

  91. Demian Phillips
    Go

    Forget the rats milk

    I'll just take my tea with a squeeze of lemming.

    I think we need a dual use python icon, or replce the "go" with the famous foot.

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