What's the deal with veal?

(Photo: courtesy of Heaves Farm). 

Veal is up there with the biggest food taboos. If you bring up the subject of eating veal, you are more likely to get raised eyebrows (or flaming disapproval) in response, than enthused intrigue. And indeed, the less it is spoken about, the less it is eaten, and... the less is spoken about, until it spirals off the radar all together.

This socially crafted silence over veal has left quite a gap when it comes to what we know about this controversial meat: 'it’s just a young cow', 'how is it any worse than eating lamb?' Emily Boyd takes a look at what veal is and why it has this controversial status.

What is veal?
Veal is indeed the meat of baby cows, but whilst lamb is the meat of baby sheep reared in open grazing pastures, with grass a-plenty and room to move about, traditionally veal calves are raised in a way that is closer to battery chicken farming. The most extreme traditional method of raising veal calves is to store them in isolation in small hutches. They are fed a diet of milk and milk proteins only, and are not allowed out of their hutches to graze. These veal calves are slaughtered after living like this for around 18 weeks. Only the first few days, or sometimes even the first few hours of their lives, will have been spent with their mothers.

While veal calves are usually male, they can be female and this doesn’t make a difference to the meat. The reason that they tend to be male is because they are a by-product of dairy farming, and are bred from dairy cows so that they keep producing milk. The female calves are usually kept to become dairy cows themselves, and the males become veal calves.

However not all veal calves are raised exactly like this, there are different feeding and housing procedures put in place for different types of veal.

Types of veal:

• Bob veal: This is veal from calves that are sold directly to a slaughterhouse from the dairy. Before they are sold they take milk from their mother, but are sold within the first three weeks of their lives to become veal. Bob veal has a pale grey-pink colour, and is very soft in texture.

   

• Special-fed, formula-fed, or milk-fed veal: This is when the calves are fed exclusively on milk supplement that contains all the nutritional worth of normal milk. These calves would be stored individually in hutches or stalls. These calves are slaughtered at the age of 18-22 weeks, their meat is whitish-pink in colour, and while their meat is firmer than bob veal, it is still very smooth in texture.

   

• Grain-fed veal, non-special/formula-fed, or red veal: This veal is from calves that are fed on milk to begin with, but which are fed grain and hay and other nutrients once they are a little older. These calves are not slaughtered until they are 22-26 weeks old, and their meat is darker in colour, much closer to the colour or ordinary beef. The meat is also often fattier than other that from milk-fed calves.

While there are not many veal farms in the UK – far fewer than in mainland Europe – the production of veal is not illegal. In 1990 the use of veal crates was outlawed, veal crates being extremely small stalls in which calves could not move at all and were cramped in rows next to other veal calves. In 2007 these were also banned in the EU. The hutches that veal calves tend to be housed in now allow some room to move about, but they are still housed individually.

While there is a lot to frown upon with regard to veal, it is an unavoidable fact that the male calves of dairy cows are often unwanted, and within the EU those that are not sent to become veal calves are often shot at birth. Whilst sending these calves to become veal is not really the lesser of the two evils, it is one of two bad options. Recently, however, farmers have begun to treat these unwanted claves differently, producing yet another type of veal.

Rosé veal

• Rosé veal: This is veal that comes from calves that are slaughtered at around 35 weeks, and the meat is more pink in colour hence the name. The calves from which rosé veal comes are reared in a way that is approved by the RSPCA’s Freedom Food programme. They are allowed out to pasture and are not fed purely on milk, and in some cases they are not fed on milk at all.
   

Rosé veal is being produced at quite a number of farms in Britian, and is essentially veal stripped of all controversy. Dominic Smith, a farmer from Sunnyside Farm in Dumfriesshire, produces rosé veal to sell all over Scotland. He spoke to iLoveMyGrub about his thoughts on veal:

“Veal used to be a dirty word with how it was produced in the 70’s and 80’s, but people need to get over it. British veal is produced in a different way [to mainland European veal] and everyone who drinks milk needs to realise that we have to use these bull calves for something.”

The most basic definition of veal is meat from a calf that has been slaughtered before the age of eight months old. There are some farmers who dub their veal baby-beef, or just young cow meat, but really veal as it is produced nowadays in England tends not to be cruel. As Smith points out, raising bull calves for rosé veal is a far superior way of dealing with them than shooting them at birth or raising them as veal calves in the old fashioned way. It is common to dislike the idea of veal simply because it is a baby animal, regardless of how it is raised, but by the age that calves are slaughtered for rosé veal they are no longer cute little baby animals, but great big 300 kilogram beasts.

Veal, therefore, need not always be a taboo word that people shy away from mentioning. It need not be associated with images of poorly treated baby animals in cages, and need not get your blood boiling. Sadly in some countries these associations are still valid, but in England, veal for the most part, has almost taken on a new meaning. Rosé veal is a no more controversial than any of the major meats that are available in our supermarkets.

Written by: Emily Boyd