What's the Big Deal About Veal?

Veal calves are byproducts of the dairy industry. Males are taken from their mothers--genetically engineered and artificially inseminated dairy cows--within two days of their birth and sold to veal producers. Female calves grow up to share the same fate as their mothers: as perpetually breeding, milk-producing machines pumped full of hormones, tranquilizers, and antibiotics, who spend most of their lives standing up in cramped pens. Veal calves are denied their mothers' milk and imprisoned alone, weak and anemic, in dark, tiny stalls until they're slaughtered.

Male calves are killed at three to four months of age after a completely solitary life in chains inside miniscule dark wooden crates. They lie in their own excrement, choking on the ammonia fumes. They cannot stand up and can barely turn around; exercise is not allowed because that would result in tougher meat. They suffer from chronic diarrhea caused by a total lack of solid food. They are denied drinking water to force them to drink more of their drug-laced liquid feed, which causes them to rapidly gain weight and become marketable faster. Their diet is also deliberately devoid of iron and other vital nutrients, including their mother's milk (so much for so-called milk-fed veal), in order to produce the pale color sought by consumers.

Veal meat is not safe to eat because of the toxic drugs and chemicals in the calves' liquid feed. Over one-third of the veal calves sampled by the Humane Farming Association have tested positive for clenbuterol, an illegal, dangerous drug.

Veal is often the first animal product that people who are concerned about factory farming abuses stop eating. It's easy to avoid. If enough people continue to boycott veal, it will send a clear message to the inhumane veal industry and its big bad cousin, the dairy industry.

Happily, veal consumption has gone down dramatically since the 60s because of public knowledge about how veal calves are raised. A recent movement to make veal production more "humane" ignores the fact that raising and killing calves for their meat and denying them their mother's milk can never be called humane. At any rate, presently only 10% of the calves are raised in group pens that allow some socialization and exercise. But because of the expense of using crates, the figure is unlikely to go much higher. Calves raised in this way are still separated from their mothers, and most still get a milk-replacement formula. Some luckier ones also get grain along with the milk replacement. Although a few small farmers allow calves to go to pasture with their mothers, their lives are still cut short so that a few humans can titillate their taste buds.

The American Veal Association maintains that the new kinds of veal on the market don't even deserve the name. It claims that only individually crated veal calves produce the real deal, and that feeding them grass or grain changes the texture of the meat.

Humane Farm Animal Care, unfortunately with the approval of the Humane Society of the United States and the ASPCA, is enabling the veal industry by supporting pen raising and giving pen-raised calves its "Certified Humane" label as long as they're fed grain and raised and slaughtered under certain conditions. But humanely raised veal-an oxymoron if there ever was one-is hard to find and it's costly. If you happen to come across this type of veal, don't let the pleasantly evocative names of current varieties-meadow, rose, pastured, grass-fed, free-range, suckled-fool you. Veal still represents unacceptable suffering on the part of animals.