Is dairy cruel if the cow isn’t killed?

The objection

“I get the issue with meat. But milk? Nobody dies for a glass of milk. Where’s the harm?”

The answer

Being milked doesn’t kill a cow directly, and she lives longer than most beef cattle: of the 2.3 million cattle and calves slaughtered in Great Britain in 2024, 1.5 million were 12 to 30 months old (industry figures) [6]. The milk only comes from a cow who has recently given birth, though, so every glass depends on a cycle of pregnancies and calves taken away, and in high-yielding herds that cycle ends in culling after three or four years of milking [4]. In Britain, dairy cows made up more than half of the cows slaughtered each year from 2021 to 2025, industry figures show [7].

Do cows need to be milked?

A cow needs milking only because she has given birth, and a dairy farm makes sure she gives birth about once a year. Like any mammal she makes milk for her calf, so without a calf there is no milk [2]. In 195 milk-recorded Holstein-Friesian herds in the UK, the typical cow in 2023 had her first calf at about 26 months, was bred again about 80 days after calving while still being milked, and calved roughly every 13 months [1]. Taking the milk usually means taking the calf. RSPCA Australia, an animal welfare charity, calls separation within 24 hours of birth standard dairy industry practice (2019), done to cut the risk of disease and to make milking easier [2]. It says separation is stressful for both cow and calf, more so the longer they have been together, and suggests gentler methods such as separating them gradually, which it says the industry should explore [2].

The authors of the UK study (2025) note that breeding for milk output has made udder problems and infertility the most common reasons cows are culled involuntarily [1]. They also found that many measures of somatic cell count, one of the tests used to detect hidden udder infection [3], improved in their herds between 2014 and 2023 [1]. Mastitis, infection of the udder, is common worldwide. A 2021 meta-analysis of studies of dairy cattle and buffaloes published from 1967 to 2019, nearly half of the subclinical ones from India, put the pooled prevalence of clinical mastitis, the kind with visible signs, at 15% and of subclinical infection at 42%, with wide variation between studies [3].

How long do dairy cows live?

In countries with high-yielding herds a dairy cow is culled after an average of three to four years of milking, and in UK herds the typical cow leaves at about six years old, against a natural lifespan of around 20. The three to four years comes from a 2020 review, whose authors call it much shorter than the natural life expectancy of dairy cattle [4], and a 2021 review of longevity in Holstein dairy cattle puts the natural lifespan of cows at about 20 years [5]. In the median herd of the 195 in the UK study, cows left at an average age of 2,198 days, about six years, in 2023, down from 2,355 days in 2014 [1]. Their productive life shrank over the same decade from just over four years to three years and nine months [1]. The records count every exit, so some of those cows may have gone on to other herds [1]. Farmers cull mainly for poor health, failure to conceive or faults in a cow’s build, reasons the review’s authors say may indicate reduced welfare before culling, and a ready supply of replacement heifers, which push older cows out when they calve, is a major driver of how soon cows are culled [4].

Can dairy cows be used for beef?

Dairy cows do end up as beef, and in Great Britain the dairy herd now supplies more than half of the cattle slaughtered. AHDB’s figures, drawn from British Cattle Movement Service records, show that 52% of the cattle and calves slaughtered there in 2024 were born to dairy cows [6], and that dairy cows themselves made up 56% of the cows slaughtered each year on average from 2021 to 2025 [7]. Most calves born to British dairy cows are now bred for beef: in 2025, 60% of those registered had a beef bull as their sire, 32% were dairy heifers, and the rest were male dairy calves, who will never give milk [8]. Undercover footage released in 2017 by the campaign groups Animal Liberation Queensland and Aussie Farms covers a Queensland dairy farm, the saleyard and the slaughterhouse.