Healthy Food Database

Veal is the calf meat from dairy cows. To produce milk the cows must be impregnated and give birth. Some female calves are kept to replace less productive or old cows, the male calves live for up to 8 weeks before being slaughtered for veal. Australians eat very little veal and mercifully produce no "white veal". Producing white veal is an abhorrent agricultural practice. Young male calves are confined in small wooden crates less than two feet wide. The calves are chained by the neck and cannot turn around, stretch, or lie down comfortably. To reduce the calves' natural activity and therefore keep the meat tender, they are kept in darkness and deprived of social interaction. Their diet consists solely of a liquid milk substitute which causes chronic diarrhoea. This liquid diet is deficient in iron and fibre, and is designed to make the animals anaemic. It is this anaemia which produces the pale coloured or 'white' flesh desired by gourmets.

Category: Meat

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