Milk doesn't kill the cow though, what's the harm?

The objection

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

The answer

A cow only gives milk because she has had a calf, exactly like any mammal. So the dairy industry keeps her pregnant. From around two years old she is artificially inseminated in a cycle that repeats, by design, roughly every year for the rest of her short life (CIWF). She is, in plain terms, milked while pregnant and impregnated while milking.

Then the calf. To take the milk for ourselves, we take the calf, and standard industry practice is separation within 24 hours of birth (RSPCA). Cows are devoted mothers, and separated cows are documented bellowing and calling for their missing calves for days. If it’s a male, he can’t give milk, so he is either shot shortly after birth or reared for veal or beef. The female will be put on the same conveyor belt her mother is on.

And the mother herself? A cow can naturally live to around 20 years. A dairy cow is slaughtered at roughly 5 to 6 years old, once her yield falls and her body, pushed to produce far more milk than nature intended, begins to fail (The Humane League). She ends up as low-grade beef.

There is no “milk without death.” Dairy and beef are the same industry. A glass of milk requires a pregnancy you imposed, a calf you took, and a mother killed at a quarter of her natural age. She doesn’t die for the milk. She dies because of it.