Kokova Magazine

For generations veal was seen as a taboo subject - controversial in its making and receiving very divided responses amongst its audience.

As far as reputation goes, it's right up there with foie gras.

Few things raise the hackles of thoughtful eaters quite like veal...but it's time to dispel a few myths about veal, and consider the case for British rose veal.

The Meat Crusade, which campaigns to save the high street butcher, thinks it's time to back this controversial and much misunderstood meat and put it back on the menu.

John Penny & Sons have launched a new national campaign, The Meat Crusade. The aim is to put quality butchers meat back onto every dinner table in Britain by raising awareness in quality and taste and offering a greater understanding of how ethical meat operations work.

John Penny, Yorkshire farmer and wholesale butcher, explains: -

The fact is, if you drink milk or eat cheese, it's crueller not to eat rose veal. Consider male dairy calves. Over a quarter of a million of them are killed each year. Unable to produce milk, obviously, and unsuitable for beef production, they are shot soon after birth as a "waste product" of the dairy industry. Either that or they're exported to Europe, where the continental craving for pale meat means their welfare is profoundly compromised.

We've seen a rise in enquiries from consumers for ethically produced rose veal which is a world apart from the crates and practices that gave veal a bad name a decade ago. Rose veal calves are able to move around fields and graze so their meat has a redder tone, hence the name rose veal.

And it's not about eating day-old baby cows - if you think that we eat chickens when they are 42 days old, lamb at five to six months, and pigs at five months - then at eight to twelve months, rose veal is the oldest of the lot. No one talks about that side of things.

Dairy calves are being shot at 24 to 48 hours old and if we drink milk we all have to share in this instead of leaving the burden of it to the farmers. Eating rose veal is utilising those calves and solving a problem.

The majority of veal being produced in Europe and imported into the UK isn't raised under conditions anything like our welfare standards. The calves have restricted milk diets to keep the meat white. Rose veal is slightly pink and has a lovely, lovely flavour and it's full of protein. I'd love to see more people eating it. It's not the cheapest so for a lot of people it would have to be a once-a-week meal. It's time to face our responsibilities: this is just a different kind of meat.

British rose veal has already won the ethical stamp of approval from the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) but it remains a niche market in the UK, just 0.1% of the meat we consume each year.

Dairy cows are kept constantly pregnant to feed our milk and cheese habit but while female calves can go on to replace their mothers in the dairy system; there is no market for the male calves of dairy breeds which aren't considered good for beef.

Penny and other campaigners claim that persuading British consumers to start eating rose veal will go some way to address the "hidden scandal" of our love of milk that sees an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 male dairy calves shot within hours of birth.

We do still have this perception that veal is bad but this rose veal is a high-welfare, high-quality product. Technically, they are no longer even calves when they are slaughtered so a more appropriate term would be young beef and I applaud campaigners for taking this up as we really do have to raise awareness of just how much more sustainable and viable a route this is for these calves.

Buying rose veal certainly helps address some of this needless waste of animal life. If you want the assurance that your meat has been ethically reared, buy your meat from a reputable butcher, who can tell you exactly which farm it has come from and how it was reared.

Luke Ryder, dairy adviser at the National Farmers Union