The Breast Milk Black Market
LatestVictoria’s Secret has convinced many people that breasts mainly exist to be pushed up and presented in an overpriced, lacey package for one’s sexual enjoyment. Of course, their real function is to make milk that nourishes babies — and if you’re willing to sell this precious body fluid on the black market, you could make thousands.
An article in Wired reveals there’s a massive need for human milk, and there are two basic routes for getting it to babies (and adults, but we’ll address the seedier side of the business later here). The more traditional method involves moms donating their excess product to non-profit milk banks. The milk is then screened for things like drugs, hepatitis, and HIV, and pasteurized. For the most part, this milk winds up being sold to hospitals for about $4 an ounce, and fed to sick and premature babies. There’s also a newer company called Prolacta Bioscience, which turns a profit by condensing nutrients from donor breast milk into a syrup. For $135 a day, hospitals can feed sick infants this fortifier, mixed with milk from the child’s own mother.
Then there’s the shadier business of women simply selling their milk or swapping it with no middleman. In addition to groups that organize free milk exchanges, like Human Milk 4 Human Babies and Eats on Feets, there’s now a site that functions as the classified ads for breast milk. The site Only the Breast was founded about a year and a half ago by Glenn and Chelly Snow after Chelly gave birth and noticed posts online by new moms who either couldn’t produce enough milk for their babies, or had a freezer full of milk in Ziploc bags. The decided to start their own site, since Craigslist and eBay have banned the sale of body fluids (much to the chagrin of breast milk enthusiasts and people who take the vampire trend way too seriously).
Today there are about 3,000 people who use the site at no cost. Milk usually goes for around $1 to $2.50 an ounce, and one young mom told Wired she stands to make $20,000 if she sells for a year. Posts can be broken down by categories, based on the age of the baby, location, or special diets like vegan or gluten-free. Then there are the less obvious sections like “Discount $1.00 or Less,” “Fat Babies,” and “Men Buying Breast Milk.” Ostensibly, not everyone who posts in that last category is looking for a sexy bag of frozen breast milk to satisfy some fetish. Adults post saying they need human milk to treat a variety of medical ailments, from psoriasis to gastric bypass surgury. We’re not sure what’s going on with this guy, but he does seem like quite the gentleman: