I agree that this is going to be something to watch, but I can't see why it is
seems so unthinkable.  If one is prepared to pump and feed one's child, then
this is an extension of that idea.  I know some women pump because they have to
be at work or their baby is too sick to suckle, but others choose this for
convenience and social acceptability.  Pumping is a chore, so why the heck not
buy the stuff in.  After all, if breast*feeding* isn't the issue, it makes sense
to me.

Anyway, women have done this for money for centuries (wet nursing).  They have
also done it because they had to, because they were slaves or serfs or
bondswomen.  There may have been some human contact for the babies (as one
poster noted) but there have always been complaints in literature of nurses who
doped the babies to make them feed less, or over-laid them or whatever.

Women also make money by selling their bodies for sex.  They also make money by
working as bonded servants/slaves in factories.  Some times they are sold by
their families into servitude.  Sometimes they go to work at 16 and work for
wealthier women in their houses as maids and cleaners and child carers.
Sometimes they agree to sell their eggs to others, sometimes they rent their
wombs out as surrogates.  We need to put selling milk into context.

The whole labour and union movement is about civilizing the cash nexus of
society which places a monetary value on the products of the human body, whether
that product is work, milk, ova, or sexual favours.   In that context, it sure
makes sense to me that people will try to set up such a business and others will
be willing to participate.  If we want to change the desire -- because we may be
able to thwart this proposal by legislation -- to do this, we need to change
society in a deeply radical way.

Selling human milk is all part of the system we are pretty much locked into with
cheap computer components from far eastern sweat shops, inexpensive clothing
made by child slaves and food flown in from half-way round the globe grown by
farming families who cannot afford safety equiptment or to allow their children
to stop work long enough to go to school.

I don't like the idea of selling human milk, because I feel that it reduces
breastfeeding to another element of the exploitative and de-humanising
capitalist system.  For me one of the empowering things about breastfeeding it
that it can take place outside this system.  (Of course, it rarely does in
western countries where the breastfeeding mother needs to purchase breast pads,
bras, pumps, pay consulting fees and so on).  But once you are in the system I
think it is only a matter of degree, in a sense, although I know it doesn't FEEL
that way.

Magda Sachs
Breastfeeding Supporter
The Breastfeeding Network
Saddleworth, Oldham, Greater Manchester, UK