Why Don't Vegans Eat Dairy?

Dairy IndustryNews & Events
Written by Juliane Priesemeister

Young female calf on UK dairy farm.

The short version

Vegans avoid dairy because producing milk requires:

  • Repeated forced impregnation

  • Permanent separation of mothers and calves

  • The slaughter of male calves, usually within days of birth

  • The slaughter of female cows when production declines, typically between ages four and six

  • Routine practices including disbudding, tail docking, and castration, often without anaesthetic

These are not edge cases. They are how dairy is produced. In every country. At every scale. Including at award-winning, welfare-certified farms. Here is the evidence behind each of those points.

 

Between November 2025 and February 2026, hidden cameras filmed inside an award-winning dairy farm in the UK. The farm supplied Marks & Spencer. It carried the RSPCA Assured label. It had won industry awards for being "high welfare." Its co-owner sat on multiple industry boards.

Over three days in November, cameras recorded more than 700 incidents of abuse. Newborn calves were kicked, hit, and thrown. One calf drowned when milk was tubed into her lungs. Calves were left without food for up to 19 hours. Hot irons were used to burn off their horn buds. Surgical castration was performed without anaesthetic.

When an M&S inspector arrived, workers had been tipped off. A dead calf was removed less than three hours before the assessment. The inspection lasted ten minutes. No pens were entered. Less than a minute after the inspector left, the abuse resumed.

For All Animals put it plainly: "This is not about one bad farm or a few bad workers. It shows what the best of the industry actually looks like."

That is one answer to the question. But it is not the whole answer.

That farm is not the problem. The system behind it is. Here is how that system works.

Dairy requires taking the calf

Cows produce milk for the same reason humans do: to feed their young. To produce milk commercially, a cow must be pregnant or have recently given birth. The dairy industry manages this through repeated forced impregnation, typically beginning when the cow is about one year old.

When the calf is born, she is separated from her mother. Usually within hours. In most cases, permanently.

The separation is not incidental to dairy production. It is the mechanism. The milk a cow produces is for her calf. To redirect it to humans, the calf must be removed.

Research on the maternal bond between cows and their calves is extensive. Cows call for their calves after separation. Calves cry. The distress is documented, measurable, and lasts for days.

Full breakdown: dairy-truth.com/motherhood-in-dairy

What happens to the calf from that point depends on one thing: whether she was born female or male.

Male calves have no place in dairy

Half of all calves born into the dairy industry are male. They will never produce milk. They have no commercial value to the dairy farmer.

In the US and Canada, most male dairy calves are sold at auction within days of birth and raised for veal or beef. In the UK, a portion are shot at birth because the cost of raising them exceeds their market value. In Australia, bobby calves are typically slaughtered at around five days old.

This is not a welfare failure at the margins. It is the economics of dairy.

A 2022 analysis by the Beef Checkoff found that dairy cattle account for between 18 and 24 percent of US beef supply. The dairy industry and the meat industry are not separate. They share the same supply chain and, ultimately, the same end.

Full breakdown: dairy-truth.com/meat-and-dairy

The calves' lives are short. The cow's is not much longer.

She is "spent." Then she is slaughtered.

A cow's natural lifespan is around 20 years. In the dairy industry, most cows are slaughtered between the ages of four and six. The cycle of forced pregnancy and intensive lactation depletes her body faster than it can recover.

By the time she is "spent," her milk production has declined enough that she is no longer profitable. She is sold at auction and slaughtered for cheap cuts of beef: hamburgers, canned soups, processed food, dog food.

One in four cows used for dairy develops mastitis, a painful bacterial infection of the mammary glands. One in three develops metritis. One in five becomes lame, sometimes severely enough that she cannot walk. These are not accidents. They are the predictable result of breeding programs that prioritize production over biology.

More than three million cows are slaughtered annually in the United States alone.

This is where most people ask: what about farms that do things differently? What about welfare-certified dairy?

"Higher welfare" dairy is a label, not a guarantee

The For All Animals investigation matters not because it exposed unusual cruelty, but because it exposed ordinary cruelty at the industry's most decorated farm.

Chris Packham, the broadcaster who stepped down as RSPCA president over the dairy certification scheme, said: "On dairy farms, calves are taken from their mothers within hours of birth, confined and subjected to mutilations. I stepped down as an RSPCA president because I could no longer support a scheme that certifies factory farming."

The welfare problems the cameras caught — calf separation, disbudding with hot irons, force-feeding synthetic milk, castration without anaesthetic — are all permitted under RSPCA Assured standards. They are not violations of the standard. They are the standard.

Undercover investigations in the US, Canada, and Australia have documented the same practices at farms carrying welfare labels including Certified Humane and Animal Welfare Approved. Different label. Same system.

More: dairy-truth.com/undercover-footage

What you can do

Most people who reduce or eliminate dairy do not start because they hate cheese. They start because they learned what dairy actually requires, and that knowledge changed something.

Going dairy-free does not save the cows already in the system over night. But it reduces the number of cows bred into it. That is the goal: fewer (and eventually no more) animals bred for a purpose that causes this much harm.

Most people start with milk. Plant-based options are widely available and the difference is minimal for most everyday uses. Cheese is harder. But harder is not the same as impossible, and partial change still matters.

 
Start here:
→ Replace dairy milk in coffee and cooking first
→ Explore oat, soy, almond, or pea milk for drinking and baking
→ Check dairy-truth.com/dairy-free-alternatives for product guides
→ Read our full Life of a Cow page

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Juliane Priesemeister
Next

Are Cows Used for Milk Killed for Meat? Yes, Here Is How It Works