Originally posted by Bramond
Sorry but this is just ridiculous. So if she was pouring cows bodily fluids down the sink, and washing out a glass, youd be fine with it??? Also youd expect them to wash the pump in the toilet area where its all nice and full of germs for baby to possibly pick up, rather than in a food preparation area.

Maddness..absolute maddness, the worlds turning on its head with the stuff!!
Actually I'd expect her to wash it out at home, just like most everyone else does who brings a food container to work anyway, despite it not having human fluids in it or being potentially dangerous to other people.

What I don't expect...no, wait, what I don't accept, given the selfish attitudes so many people have these days I guess I am not really surprised when this happens...is for someone to decide they're going to have a child and then think the rest of the world should make sacrifices for them or be inconvenienced/disgusted/put at risk for them because of it. Sorry, but if you decide to have kids, they're your responsibility and nobody else's.

And I can't believe you're even comparing human breast milk to the kind of milk you buy at the store. As everyone else has said, that milk is held up to very high health standards and goes through very closely regulated and complex processes to ensure it is clean and safe to consume.

Furthermore, even if it was not and someone just sucked it right out of the udder with their mouth: cows are not the same species, and diseases/infectious parasites/etc. aren't as transferrable to us from cows for this reason.

Why do you think hospitals have such incredibly stringent rules about dealing with medical waste? Why do you think everything in the hospital that could even have a remote possiblity of coming into contact with human body fluids is considered bioHAZARD material? Because there is a chance (especially in a place where people go when they are sick) that it could contain disease-causing organisms.

Why do you think people in third world countries, where they don't necessarily have the luxury of "food prep areas" that are free of diseases which can be found in substances originating from the human body, die much more frequently of preventable diseases that have been eliminated or are almost nonexistent in the country where YOU live (except in cases where people do -not- live under clean conditions or have been exposed to someone who does not)?

Why exactly do you think -real- disease epidemics (and no I don't mean people coming down with 'a bad case of the flu') happen in third world countries? Certainly malnutrition and other consequences of extreme poverty make a person more susceptible, but you can't catch something if it's not there in the first place.

Why do you think you can't find human breast milk on the shelves in the supermarket and adults who drink it are considered "weird"? Why is that taboo?

There have been studies done which measure peoples' reactions of disgust to things that may make us squeamish, such as rotten fruit, ugly insects, and other things. Always far above all the other things and by far the highest on the list of 'disgusting things' have been infected human flesh and human body fluids/biproducts. Even instinctually people know what to keep away from, because they know even without science what's dangerous for mortal beings.

Who knows, maybe the reason people don't like to see someone nursing in public is because they're disgusted by the possibility of human body fluids leaking on something they might touch, or by just seeing/thinking about the milk and having a gut reaction, not seeing naked human flesh. I can't speak for anyone else but while I could care less if women went around topless with boobs showing all day long, what I would not like is the possibility of coming into contact with their body fluids including breast milk. I'm quite accustomed to seeing boobs, having two of my own that I can look at all day long if I felt like it.

So no, it's not 'absolute madness' to be turned off by human biproducts, especially those from a stranger, being splattered and splashed all over the same place you have to eat. It's human nature. As I mentioned in my earlier post it seems natural to me for someone to nurse a baby, but a lot of other things humans do are "natural" too. We just don't do them in public because there are social taboos placed on them, for a reason: to maintain the safety and good health of those around you, and thus the integrity of the group as a whole.