And I'm and Hi, welcome to Food for Thought. My name is Colleen Patrick Gudreau from Compassionate

Cooks. I founded Compassionate Cooks to empower people to make

informed food choices and to debunk the myths about vegetarianism and animal rights.

You can learn more about who we are and what we do by

visiting our website Compassionate cooks.com.

My perception of cows milk, why we drink it, how it's produced, how the cows are treated, etc.

Is much different today than it was when I was growing up.

And it's one of my hot button issues.

I don't know if it's because I'm a woman, because I've seen men react this way too, but there's something really offensive about messing with an animal's reproductive system, a woman's reproductive system, manipulating it, exploiting it, using it,

and basically throwing it away.

Now, I don't know, we see things this way because I used to believe like many people that cows just kind of gave

milk and that there wasn't an ethical issue with taking it. It was as if we all

believe that cows have an excessive amount of the stuff just hanging around

in their utters meant for human consumption like we're almost taught to believe

that we're doing them a favor by taking their milk.

I've even heard people say that they can understand not eating meat, but they just can't

grasp not drinking cow's milk because it's such a natural product.

And obviously I couldn't disagree more.

There's nothing natural about artificially inseminating a female cow and taking away her baby

so humans could drink her milk.

It's just not natural. But how did we come to think

of this stuff as being so natural? We all picture this idyllic image of cows naturally grazing

...