And I'm and Welcome to Food for Thought. My name is Colleen Patrick Gudreau from Compassionate Cooks, which I founded to empower people to make

informed food choices and to debunk 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. I've been an animal activist and a vegetarian activist

for over 15 years now long enough to have heard every excuse in the book regarding eating

meat.

There seem to be as many excuses for eating animals as there are animals killed for such a purpose. And if you don't know what that number is

I'll tell you it's 10 billion land animals in the US alone every year killed Kilt for human consumption.

10 billion.

I don't know if that number surprises you, but it's a number so daunting to me that I can't

quite wrap my brain around it. and that's just in the US worldwide it's about

45 billion and these numbers continue to grow steadily as the human population

grows and as our addiction to meat grows.

If we included sea animals, the numbers are remarkably higher.

I've heard different totals, some of which may or may not include the bycatch,

the sea turtles, the

seals, the dolphins, the sharks, and many other

untargeted sea animals who are unfortunate enough

to be caught in the nets along with the unfortunate

targeted sea animals. And I say I've heard excuses for eating meat because that's

what they are given the fact that I've yet to hear a convincing reason. I don't

think people really give much thought to the

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