Sarah Bellum says: All week I’ve been recapping our bestest posts of the year. CosmeticsDesign blogged about strange beauty ingredients so I’m going to pull a Mid Brain and use their article to end 2009. If you liked last year’s bull semen and bird poo facials, you’ll love 2009′s crop of cosmetic craziness. (Ok, they’re not all THAT crazy but I still have to shop for a dress for NY Eve and I don’t have time to blog about anything else. So I’m outta here!)
Milk extracts
New Zealand company Quantec has launched a milk protein-based ingredient that has both anti-oxidant and anti-microbial properties. (If it really works, why does the milk always spoil in my fridge?) And PL Thomas, a US company, is using bovine colostrum, the first milk produced by a cow after she gives birth, to make a cosmetic ingredient. (I hope they leave enough for the poor baby calves.) Supposedly it helps reduce scarring.
Snail serum
Lefty blogged before about snail slime – there’s a new version from Andes Natural Skin Care that’s meant for use on acne scarring. S Car Go!
Bog myrtle
Bog Myrtle, aka Sweet Gale, is a plant leaf with high anti-oxidant content that theoretically can combat acne causing bacteria. But do you really want a bog-based beauty balm?
Prickly pear seeds
This cactus flower seed grows all over southern Europe and North Africa. A French company is selling a version grown in Morocco that allegedly has anti-aging properties. Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with Moroccan Oil.
Grape stem cells
Caudalie has been using grape extract for years, but here’s a new ingredient made from the stem cells of a rare red grape. I didn’t even know plants had stem cells. Unless they’re just the cells from plant stems. Is that the same thing? Whatever. I’m no botanist.
That’s it for 2009. See you all next year!
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The things we do for beauty! Can’t wait to see what 2010 brings.
About Colostrum (I hope they leave enough for the poor baby calves.) Colostrum is stolen from male calves who are removed from their mother as soon as they are born who are then sold to make veal flesh. They are confined for three months and kept anemic. The “lucky” calves get shot as they tottle to drink their mother’s collustrum. This happens to cows who are kept pregnant repeatedly until she is milked dry. After 4 years or so she is so depleted of calcium she is usually unable to stand for her ride to the slaughterhouse. There she is beaten, and waterboarded in an attempt to get her to the kill room where she is eviscerated. Many times she is pregnant and her fetus will lay writhing on the kill floor until it dies at times many hours later.
@Tristan: Thanks for the info – I had no idea!
SNAILS?? SNAILS??
NOOOOooooooooooooo
Interesting article, but the pic is definitely odd.
Tristan–
I am a vet tech at a veterinary school that deals extensively with beef and dairy cattle (we even have our own dairy & meat processing), and I can assure you that cattle in the beef & dairy industries are definitely not treated this way in the US, or probably even in Europe & Australia (though I don’t know the laws there). Every single commercial slaughterhouse, whether it is slaughtering for beef or something else, is stricly regulated in the treatment of its animals. If you know of any individual slaughterhouses that do what you said (beating the animals, milking them to the point of collapse, etc.), you need to report them to the authorities. Any cattle slaughtered for beef (which includes veal) are usually killed as quickly and painlessly as possible (their are actually laws for this). While I don’t personally eat veal, because I just don’t like the idea of eating a calf, veal calves are not treated particularly cruelly, and none of the calves are shot or kept anemic. They are fed a nutritionally complete milk-replacer or grain diet.
Also, I’m fairly sure that live evisceration of any animal is illegal in the US, and I can assure you that any live fetus would die when its mother was humanely killed, not that a pregnant cow would be killed, anyway, as cattle are fairly valuable, and no farmer would go to the trouble of breeding his dairy cow just for the fetus to be killed along with the cow. As for beating and stressing out the cattle while they’re alive, nobody in his right mind would do this, because it would mean poor-quality meat and milk. In fact, farmers are trying to find better, less-stressful ways to keep and herd their cattle because it’s beneficial to them and the animals. And why would you waterboard a cow?
I’m not trying to make you angry or defensive or anything here. I encourage you to visit a slaughterhouse and take a tour. Keep an open, objective mind if you can. Education is the best tool for fighting something that you don’t believe in. Please don’t get sucked into rumors and propaganda–that’s really the reason for this website (The Beauty Brains). Actually, Wikipedia has a great article on veal production, if you want to read that.
If you don’t believe in eating meat and dairy or something like that, I just ask that you not bad-mouth the farmers who are trying to make a living and meet the demand of most consumers. I know a lot of farmers, whether they’re beef, dairy, grain, etc., and most of them are good, law-abiding people. Like I said, though, if you know of a particular slaughterhouse that is torturing its animals in the manner you mentioned, notify your local authorities, call your nearest veterinary school, or something like that.
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