Rethinking the Impact of Advocating Against Dairy
What I missed in my push for all-or-nothing vegan advocacy
One of the most common things a vegan hears is, "I could never be vegan because I can't give up cheese." This resistance is understandable, given that dairy products are everywhere—in almost every dish, cuisine, and culture across the world—and it seems harmless at first glance.
What's not obvious is that mammals such as cows only produce milk for a short while (usually ~10 months) post pregnancy. This means cows have to be repeatedly impregnated, their calves are separated from them, and if the calves are male, they are often slaughtered1. When you understand this, it becomes easier to empathize with those who are deeply passionate about advocating against dairy consumption.
Looking back on my own journey, it wasn't until I watched a documentary about the dairy industry in India2 that I really grasped the widespread nature of this cruelty. This led me, like many others, to advocate for an all-or-nothing approach to quitting every animal product, especially dairy.
All through that time, I never paused to wonder: was this disproportionate focus on dairy having as much impact as I had imagined?
Giving up dairy doesn’t spare as many cows as we'd like it to
On average, a US consumer consumes about 660 pounds (or 300 kg) of milk per year3, counting the milk needed to make various dairy products like cheese and yogurt.
While a typical US dairy cow produces ~24,000 pounds (that’s about ~11,000 kg) of milk in a year4 — which is roughly from a single pregnancy and lactation cycle.
This means it would take about ~36 people giving up dairy for an entire year to spare just one cow from a single pregnancy (and one calf from being slaughtered). Or, put another way, a single person would need to avoid dairy for about 36 years5 to achieve the same reduction.
By this measure, I have more than a quarter century to go before I can say I've spared a single dairy cow from factory farming, simply because of the huge amount of milk produced by one cow in just one lactation cycle.
Meanwhile, the average American eats the equivalent of a whole chicken roughly every two weeks —that’s around 28 chickens per year6. Over those same 36 years, that adds up to more than a 1,000 chickens bred and slaughtered in factory farms.
To put this into perspective, try naming the mother cow and her calf. I thought of Gauri and Nandu! Try to think about the suffering they’re spared when someone gives up dairy. Now, try to think of more than a thousand names for all those chickens. Can you picture that? Honestly, I can't even begin to imagine that many names, let alone grasp the scale of their suffering.
Prioritizing advocacy against dairy is also understandable on a biological level. Research shows that our empathy and compassion tend to decrease as the evolutionary distance increases7. Most people, including many animal advocates, naturally feel more compassion toward mammals—our evolutionary cousins—than toward birds or other vertebrates who are more distantly related to us. This bias isn't necessarily about the number of animals suffering or how intensely they suffer, but about how easily we can connect with them emotionally.
What matters in the end is what works
I am well aware that for many passionate vegan advocates the most important metric in the universe is the total number of vegans. I used to think this way, too. After all, if someone chooses to go vegetarian instead of vegan, that does nothing for this metric regardless of how many animals are spared from their suffering.
But I’ve come to realize that what truly matters to animals is the outcome of our actions, not our intentions or ideals. The most important question then is: are fewer animals suffering in factory farms because of what we’re doing? Animals don’t care about how pure our motives are. To them, what matters is whether they are suffering less. Hence, advocating for whatever is most likely to result in a helpful change for animals is what matters.
Ultimately, even if our goal is to make a big difference for cows specifically, it might actually be more effective to focus on systemic changes. For example, pushing corporations to drop plant milk surcharges, supporting the development of alternative milk technologies (like plant-based, precision fermentation, or cultivated dairy) to displace huge volumes of milk, and fighting for legislative reforms in factory farming. Each of these actions can have a much larger impact—way beyond just sparing Gauri and Nandu.
PS:
If you are interested to learn about the suffering per serving of animal products, others have famously calculated the relative scale of these numbers a long time ago.
Here's an infographic from Vox that does a good job explaining the life of a cow.
Full Documentary: Mother’s milk (Maa ka Doodh)
Our World in Data: per capita milk production in the US.
Few caveats: If we were to account for elasticity of supply, this number will unfortunately only be higher because for every 1 pound decrease in demand will result in a < 1 pound decrease in supply. Additionally, this number varies based on the country. For India, I estimate it would likely be in the range of ~9-10 years (~1500 kg milk produced per animal vs ~160kg production per capita).
Our world in Data: Chickens slaughtered for meat per person
Thanks so very much for this thoughtful analysis, Aditya. I think the most important part of it is how you understand and have empathy for why most advocates are so much more passionate about mammals than non-mammals. This is, as you know, even more true for dairy cows, given that we all have mothers (and many of us are mothers). We don't, OTOH, see ourselves in chickens.
Interesting angle. And thanks for the data. I looked at the USDA milk production chart you cited. I was surprised that one mother cow can produce 24,000 pounds of milk from one pregnancy! That seems like a lot, so I looked up the equivalent for a human mother's milk production. I nursed my son for a year, and Google tells me that I probably produced about 1,000 lbs of milk for his big infancy needs. Wow! More than I thought. I suppose a mother cow produces so much more milk since her baby grows much bigger and much faster. Of course the dairy industry forcefully takes away her baby and then takes all of her milk for their own profit. If I were in her hooves, I would definitely want animal advocates to also speak out for me.