Cheese =! vegetarian
From the learn something every day files:
I did not know this. Cheese is not vegetarian. Cheese requires a rennet, to speed the coagulating process along. And for most cheeses out there, rennet is made from the contents of the fourth stomach of a newborn calf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrennet.html
While this doesn’t directly affect my diet — I eat beef — my girlfriend is an ethical vegitarian, and I’m the cook. So as of yesterday, she swore off cheese cold turkey. Yay.
The thing is, there are so-called vegetarian cheeses, using plant material, microbes, or DNA for rennet. However, I read this one here: http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/12/is-cheese-vegetarian.html
which makes an interesting point: You can’t have milk without bearing calves, and at best only some will be kept for milking; the rest will be slaughtered eventually.