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Teacher Says 12-Year-Old Student Did Not Realize Milk Came From Cows

Recently, a vegan teacher and Reddit user posted in the forum r/Vegan, saying that their 12-year-old student did not realize that milk came from cows.

12 year old I teach did not realise milk came from cows.
byu/GreenApronArt invegan

The teacher explained that the call has a zoom seminar that spoke about how different industries use math. They said that the dairy industry talked about how they use math to measure grass grown, to feed the cattle for upcoming months, and more.

“However, the grossest part was that, after they make the cows give birth in spring and the calves then get taken to a pen with feeders (that they can access whenever they want, the farmer added with a flourish) where they have to use maths to work out how much POWDERED MILK FORMULA among other things to give the calf so it receives adequate nutrition,” they wrote.

The teacher went on to say that they couldn’t find their disgust and said out loud: “that’s ridiculous, they should be with their mums to get their milk!!”

A student who was near the teacher looked shocked and said, “Wait that’s where milk comes from?”. The teacher was shocked and said “yes.. who it’s really for! Baby cows!”

The teacher said that they could not believe the disconnect and lack of awareness. Many users flocked to the comments to talk about similar stories of people they’ve met that believe milk does not come from cows.

“I’ve literally met adults in their 30s that believe dairy cows just naturally produce milk because they’re dairy cows,” one user wrote. “Worse still is when they have glaring gaps in understanding animal agriculture like that but still passionately defend it and just outright deny what happens to animals. For some of your students, your reaction might have been an early seed that leads to considering the ethics of their food.”

“This was a conversation I had last week with the 34 year old man I am dating. He was dumbfounded to learn that cows do not just naturally produce milk by virtue of being cows,” another user wrote.

“I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know that until my late 20s. It’s absolutely crazy how much common sense just goes over your head with enough conditioning and propaganda. You just don’t think about it, and many people don’t, because it’s so normalized, you just assume there’s a specific reason it’s from cows, that they work differently from other mammals, not just that they’re big and easy to sexually exploit for profit,” another added.

There is often a lack of education or misinformation about where food comes from in general. Knowing where your food comes from empowers you to make informed choices about what you eat and supports sustainable, ethical, and healthy food systems.