Big Dairy, Big Bully — A Petty Fight Over Semantics

With all its might, wealth, and political clout, Big Dairy has decided its next great battle isn’t climate change, water pollution, or animal welfare. No, it’s waging war over… words.

The Dairy Pride Act — a zombie bill first introduced in 2017, now resurrected in 2025 — aims to strip plant-based foods of the right to use terms like “milk,” “cheese,” or “yogurt” unless they come from the lactating glands of a hooved mammal [1]. Soy milk? Oat cheese? Almond yogurt? Off-limits.

The Bully Tactic: Goliath vs. the Scrappy Underdog

The dairy lobby isn’t really worried you’ll confuse soy milk with cow’s milk. Their own market research — and the FDA’s — shows consumers already know the difference (the FDA’s 2023 draft guidance explicitly allows “milk” for plant-based beverages with clear qualifiers) [2]. What the industry actually fears is something more dangerous to its bottom line: that you might compare the two… and pick the alternative.

And that fear isn’t about losing to an equal opponent. This is a David vs. Goliath fight — except Goliath is a multi-billion-dollar industry armed with taxpayer subsidies, government-backed marketing, and deep political influence, while David is a young, lean, innovative sector without the same infrastructure, lobbying power, or generational foothold.

Conventional dairy still holds over 78% of the market [3]. The global dairy market was worth $562 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $785 billion by 2034 [3]. U.S. cow’s milk production (milk cash receipts) exceeded $59 billion in 2022 [4]. Meanwhile, in retail milk dollar sales, plant-based accounts for only about 15% in the U.S. (≈$2.9B retail sales in 2023) [5].

Faced with even modest competition, Big Dairy is trying to control the narrative — restricting language, meddling in science and policy, and shaping social trends to preserve dominance.

Plant Milks Have Always Been Milk

The word “milk” has never belonged exclusively to cows. Across the world, cultures have been making and consuming plant-derived milks for centuries — long before the first supermarket dairy aisle existed [6].

Coconut milk is a dietary staple in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands. In Malay/Indonesian, it’s santan; in Tagalog (Philippines), it’s gata; in Tamil, it’s thengai paal — literally “coconut milk.” It adds richness, creaminess, and nutrition to curries, stews, and desserts, playing the same functional role dairy milk plays in European cuisines.

Soy milk (doujiang in Chinese) has been part of East Asian diets for over 2,000 years. It’s consumed fresh in China, Japan (tōnyū), and Vietnam (sữa đậu nành), often at breakfast and as the base for tofu-making. It entered Western markets in the early 20th century through Chinese entrepreneurs and vegetarian health movements — decades before oat or almond milk gained popularity.

In both cases, “milk” is the correct cultural and historical term — a nourishing white liquid derived from plants, with established culinary and nutritional roles. No one in Manila, Beijing, or Kingston is confused into thinking coconuts or soybeans lactate.

The sudden push to police “milk” in Western markets only began when plant-based beverages started competing directly with dairy for shelf space and market share. That isn’t linguistic integrity — it’s power hoarding, not consumer protection.

Milk for Whom?

And let’s get real about the nutritional pretense: judging plant-based milk by how closely it matches cow’s milk is absurd. If we’re going to compare nutrition, the baseline shouldn’t be bovine milk — designed for calves — but human milk, designed for human growth and development.

That’s the true gold standard in human diets: perfectly balanced for our needs, with the right mix of fats, proteins, carbs, immune compounds, and bioactive elements. Case in point: protein — the nutrient currently in the spotlight. Human milk contains only about 2.6 g per cup [7], well below cow’s milk (~8 g) and much closer to many plant milks such as oat (~2–3 g) and almond (~1 g). Soy is the outlier at ~7 g, comparable to cow’s milk. By this measure, most plant milks more closely resemble human milk than does cow’s milk.

If Big Dairy insists on policing “accuracy,” fine. Then let’s drop the euphemism and call their product what it is: lactating secretion— bovine lactating secretion, to be exact. But they don’t get to monopolize words like milk, yogurt, or cheese. Those belong to public language, not one industry.

Oat, soy, almond, coconut, and other plant milks were never meant to be cow’s milk — and they don’t need to be. They stand on their own as nourishing, culturally rich, and often more biologically appropriate options for humans.

The Bigger Cost of Big Dairy’s Fight

This fight isn’t just a petty semantic battle — it props up a system that harms people and the planet.

• Pushing a food many can’t digest – Roughly 65–70% of adults globally are lactose intolerant [8, 9], meaning the majority of the world’s population cannot comfortably consume dairy. Yet U.S. and EU dietary guidelines still promote cow’s milk as a daily staple, ignoring that it’s unsuitable for millions.
• Spreading misinformation at the cost of health – Decades of marketing have linked dairy to “strong bones” and “essential nutrition,” despite the fact that all necessary nutrients found in dairy can be sourced from plants — without the cholesterol, high saturated fat, and hormone content that can contribute to chronic disease.
• Eroding environmental health – The dairy sector’s milk supply chain accounts for roughly ~2.7–2.9% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (and about ~4% when including meat from culled/fattened dairy animals) [10], with methane as a dominant driver. Producing cow’s milk also requires around three times the GHG emissions and roughly ten times the land of plant-based milks on average [11].

By clinging to outdated dietary norms, the dairy lobby isn’t merely defending linguistic control — it’s protecting a status quo that harms public health, accelerates environmental degradation, and erases plant-based traditions that have sustained communities for centuries.

The Bottom Line

Plant milks have always been part of the human story. They are not new, not fake, and not a threat to language — unless you’re a multi-billion-dollar industry terrified of competition.

The DAIRY PRIDE Act isn’t about protecting consumers. It’s about defending market share by controlling language and undermining global food traditions.

If conventional dairy wants to compete, it should do so on taste, ethics, and nutrition — not by rewriting the dictionary. Until then? They can keep their lactating secretion; I’ll stick with my soy milk.

References

[1] FoodNavigator-USA. 2025. “US Dairy Renews Push to Restrict Alt Dairy Labeling: But Does It Need To?” August 11, 2025. https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2025/08/11/dairy-pride-act-returns-will-fda-finally-ban-milk-from-plant-based-labels
[2] AP News. 2023. “No cow needed: Oat and soy can be called milk, FDA proposes.” February 23, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/ed2acef14a014eef30a0fd24f98be07b
[3] Market.us. 2025. “Dairy Products Market Size, Share | CAGR 3.4%.” https://market.us/report/dairy-products-market
[4] USDA Economic Research Service. 2023. “Milk receipts were highest in 2022 at $59.2 billion.” https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=107845
[5] The Good Food Institute. 2024. Plant-Based Dairy: U.S. State of the Industry Report 2023.https://gfi.org/resource/plant-based-dairy-state-of-the-industry-report-2023
[6] Wikipedia. 2025. “Plant milk.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk
[7] Prentice, P., K. K. Ong, M. H. Schoemaker, E. A. van Tol, J. Vervoort, I. A. Hughes, C. L. Acerini, and D. B. Dunger. “Breast Milk Nutrient Content and Infancy Growth.” Acta Paediatrica 105, no. 6 (June 2016): 641–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.13362
[8] National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). 2025. “Definition & Facts for Lactose Intolerance.” https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/lactose-intolerance/definition-facts
[9] Misselwitz, Benjamin, Christopher Pohl, and Michael Fried. 2019. “Lactose Malabsorption and Intolerance: Pathogenesis, Diagnosis and Treatment.” United European Gastroenterology Journal 7 (6): 799–806. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050640619844125
[10] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 2023. Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock.https://www.fao.org/3/i3437e/i3437e.pdf
[11] Poore, J., and T. Nemecek. 2018. “Reducing Food’s Environmental Impacts Through Producers and Consumers.” Science 360 (6392): 987–992. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216