There is no meaningful distinction between eating flesh and eating dairy or other animal products. Animals exploited in the dairy industry live longer than those used for meat, but they are treated worse during their lives, and they end up in the same slaughterhouse after which we consume their flesh anyway. There is probably more suffering in a glass of milk or an ice cream cone than there is in a steak.
Gary L. Francione (2009). “Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation”, p.108, Columbia University Press
