LogFAQs > #912882598

Vegetarian offers more leeway. (And indulge me for two minutes because I haven't said "vegan" yet.)

You can have vegetarian cheese and non-vegetarian cheese for varying degrees of vegetarian; some vegetarians won't eat any animals, some may allow themselves to eat animal products, some will exclude specific animals. Back to cheese: cheese is commonly made with rennet -- https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet -- TL;DR, it's dead baby-cow guts, specifically some bacteria that grows there. Vegetarian cheese is made with milk or rennet alternatives, such as fungus instead of milk or vinegar instead of rennet.

Vegan cheese does not exist because vegans are super-strict. They might as well be eating just fruits, roots, nuts and seeds.