Placenta Stew?

` The sky is blue, the sun is warm - and it has been almost continually for the past couple of months.
` Today also happens to be Mother's Day. Appropriately, I have come across a 1988 Straight Dope column that is simply too bizarre not to point out. Are you ready? Here's the question:

Dear Cecil:

Here's the story. My wife just got back from Berkeley where she helped a friend give birth--and of course it all happened at home, in some kind of tub, underwater, with violins playing and midwives hovering about. Here's what she says happened next. Out came the afterbirth, which was carefully collected in a pot and put in the fridge to keep cool. Through the day, various vegetarians who dropped by to pay their respects asked about the placenta. My wife inquired, and was told that a certain stripe of high-minded vegetarian eagerly prepares and devours placenta stew, the placenta being the only form of meat that does not involve the slaughter of some innocent animal. Can this be true? And if it is, why isn't some shrewd entrepreneur bagging cow and ewe placenta and selling it at the Jewel?

I want to be told this was a tall story. --Rip Sewell, Chicago

` The ensuing responses may disturb you....