Raised humanely, whether indoors (with plenty of space to roam) or outdoors, with their own mother or a bovine wet nurse and fed a proper diet, farmers can produce pink or rose veal, with its deeper colour and richer taste.
I haven’t eaten veal for a long time, because I thought the moral argument against eating calves was black and white – eating the meat of male calves reared on milky water in tiny crates was cruel, and should be avoided.
It is this very British sense of right and wrong which means veal rarely appears on our menus, although it is a staple on the continent. Yet the alternative to eating male dairy calves is hardly, if at all, better. Since the veal crate was banned in the UK in 1990, the calves were either shot at birth or piled into a truck to face a long road journey only to be eventually put into a crate at their destination.
Veal crates were finally banned in Europe in 2007, but there’s no doubt a lot of veal is still intensively produced.
The original reasons given for all this were that dairy calves would never produce decent, dark-coloured beef; they could produce milky white – and fairly bland - veal, and the only way to do this was to prevent them exercising and forming muscle by keeping them confined and feeding them an iron and other nutrients-deficient diet.
As it turns out, there is a third way, and buying British veal reared humanely saves these calves from an early grave.
Raised humanely, whether indoors (with plenty of space to roam) or outdoors, with their own mother or a bovine wet nurse and fed a proper diet, farmers can produce pink or rose veal, with its deeper colour and richer taste.
You don’t need to rule out foreign veal altogether, as EU minimum standards have improved and some countries, such as France, have ethical, free-range veal farms. But it is more straightforward if you stick to British, where the standards across the board are higher. If you go organic, veal calves from these herds are never shot and they are always raised in small herds and able to graze outside.
When it comes down to it, you’re choosing between a calf being shot at birth, or enjoying a short life in order to grace your plate. It is difficult to defend the latter, never mind promote it, but eating British veal at least means the calves’ lives are put to some use.