Is veal unethical? What is veal?

I’ve heard a bunch of different reasons why people (not necessarily vegetarians) will not eat veal.

One person mentioned that he will not eat veal because it comes from a calf, and he felt the animal should be allowed to grow into adulthood.

Another person spoke of the sadistic way in which the animal is killed.

What’s the deal with veal? and why do so many boycott it?

To be considered veal, a calf must be slaughtered at a particular age. Any older and it simply becomes beef.

Since a diseased calf cannot be sold and a calf that recovers from a disease (minor stuff like “colds”–we aren’t talking about Mad Cow Disease, here) will be to old to sell for the higher “veal” price, calves are quaratined to ensure that they do not contract a disease from other cattle on the feedlot. The quarantine generally involves putting the calf in a small cage with some shelter from the elements that is hardly large enough for it to turn around. (This also prevents the development of muscle tone that would not be considered good “veal” flesh.)

There it stands for the few weeks of its life, eating and standing in its own excrement.

My farm-raised, beef-eater wife will not eat veal so as to not support that aspect of the cattle industry.

tomndebb is right although I think it’s even a little worse than that. I loved eating veal till I saw a picture of a calf in a stall that it could not move in at all. Movement will toughen the muscles making the meat less tender and therefore less desirable. It was truly a miserable sight to see.

I have no problems being a meat eater but like tomndebb’s wife I joined the ‘no veal’ crowd as well. Maybe that is an inconsistent view on my part since I still gleefully dig into steaks and what not but there you have it.

It’s a shame too because I really did like veal (veal marsala…yum!). Perhaps if someone could guarantee I was eating ‘free range’ veal (i.e. the calf was free to roam about in a field) or something I’d change my mind. I dunno…

The ethics of eating veal, IMHO, is no different than eating any other animal that is raised in a factory farm environment. What the calves are subjected to is pretty horrific, but not really any worse than what poultry and pigs are subjected to. The thing that makes veal “worse” is the fact that they are young animals.

I do like veal, but out of respect to some of my friends, I won’t order it in their presence.

I was in the supermarket this weekend and some woman ordered one of the live lobsters. The clerk took the lobster, PUT IT IN THE MICROWAVE, and told the woman to come back in five minutes.

On one hand, I was totally skeeved out—on the other, I had just ordered crab cakes, and I knew damn well the crabs did not all die peacefully in their beds of old age.

I’m sure boiling in a pot of water isn’t comfortable, but wouldn’t being cooked alive in a microwave be even worse for poor Lobstora?

What is veal, you ask? It’s tender and tasty and you can cut it with a fork.

I don’t have a problem eating anything that’s farm-raised for the table…at least not on moral grounds.

Thanks all. Always good to know the facts.

It is possible to buy “free range” veal - crating calves has been illegal for a few years in the UK (just have to worry about the mad cow disease).
And it’s really no worse than battery chicken eggs Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_893000/893836.stm for the latest chicken facts.

Vhatever is not an illusion, is veal; bubbie! ;j

Veal is, as others have pointed out, calf meat from a calf that could not move or exercise in any real way, and was fed an anemic liquid diet to preserve the tenderness of the flesh.

And, of course, like all practices that inflict great suffering for no important reason, (“tastee vittles” is not an important reason) yes, it is unethical. Not really any more unethical then the rest of factory farming, but that isn’t saying much.

I consider two things to be unethical in the food industry:

[ul]
[li] Animals that are not permitted at least a modicum of free movement[/li][li] Animals that are not permitted to live to the age of reproduction[/li][/ul]

Veal and lamb violate both those ethical values of mine, therefore I don’t eat them. But then again, the current practices in the poultry industry are pretty despicable too. We eat eggs produced by “organic” free-range chickens, but my grocery store doesn’t seem to carry free-range chicken meat. So I don’t know what my alternatives are on that front.

On a related note, McDonald’s is levying new standards for its chicken producers, sort of. Chickens are to be allowed 72 sq. inches each, which allows all birds to sit down to sleep at the same time (if that’s progress, it just shows how inhumane standard practice is). In addition, McDonald’s has indicated the desire to phase out “debeaking”, but admits it will take some time to figure out how to make that work (today’s larger chickens are larger, which makes them aggressive and more likely to peck each other to death). So that Oven Stuffer Roaster ® you just ate had its beak ripped off so you could enjoy a really big bird.

On cooking lobsters, and the whole ethical issue of meat-eating, I am not a vegetarian. Killing other living creatures so you can eat is a natural fact of life. Vegetarians just kill vegetables because they think it’s a neutral act karma-wise, but they’re still committing murder. My attitude is that G-d and nature made me to be an omnivore, so please pass the hamburgers and salad, no apologies.

What I DO consider my ethical obligation is to do what I can (which ain’t much) to see that these animals and vegetables get to live something resembling a life without undue cruelty, and that they are dispatched as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Cattle, for instance, are killed by a stun bolt, which seems to be pretty instantaneous (good), but the whole process of coralling them for a long walk with a bunch of other terrified cows in the dark into a slaughterhouse that smells of blood (that no doubt clues the cow into what’s about to happen) seems barbaric. In my way of thinking, an ethical slaughterhouse would have a well-lit, well ventilated corral. As far as lobsters and crabs, my guess is that they can’t tolerate much heat increase, so while it may be painful, it’s probably brief before they’re unconcious (yes, I know they’re not kosher).

Oh, I won’t tell my wife (who’s from Maine) about that. She says boiling’s the only was to properly cook a lobster. Most restaurants steam them; she hates that.

Microwaving? Might as well club their tails until they’re ready to eat. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Veal is excellent, nothing better in fact. As far as the little calf being trapped in cages, oh well. I think you only feel “sorry” for these creatures because they are so cute and cuddly. But, you crush a spider, and think nothing of it, and that spider probably had 300 children. So now there’s 300 baby spiders running around motherless. :slight_smile:

I’m not saying animals should be unduly tortured(i.e. ever seen the people eating monkey brains in faces of death?), but I can’t bring myself to feel sorry for them. Same goes for experimentation on animals, especially chimpanzees. The concerned animal rights activist might be disgusted and horrified now, but if she/he is the one with the pernicious disease, do you really think his/her ethics will remain steadfast?

Isn’t some veal killed just after the age of sexual maturity? I mean, it’s still boxed, but because of that, they can let it live longer than they used too, or so I’ve heard. Or as my friend put it, It’s not baby cow. It’s horribly tortured cow!" Of course, he gave that as his reason for liking it. I have strange friends. The guy also eats enough meat and ice cream to pacify a tiger with a sweet tooth, and still has chiseled abs. Bastard.

Of course, if the whole baby cow thing is a problem, that cuts out cheese as well. Rennet is made from calves, isn’t it? Can you even buy rennet-free cheese? And while I’m willing to give up veal (Only like it in brottwurst form, anyway) cheese is something I’m not giving up until they remove a huge hunk of port wine from my aorta.


“How do animals learn?”
“As long as they learn to taste good, I really don’t care.”

Yes, you can buy rennet-free cheese, (or, rather, cheese produced with vegetable rennet.) You will probably have to do some research to find out which brands offered in your area qualify, and you will undoubtably have better luck in your “health food”, coop, natural foods, or overpriced yuppie food store than your chain supermarket. The Bread and Circus here has a list on the cheese case.

Just out of curiosity, does vegtable rennet taste noticably different?

There are some restaurants that serve fetal veal. That’s supposedly the best, my friend likes it, I would never touch it.

I don’t eat veal and I discourage others from eating it too because of the way the baby calves are raised, but I’m afraid I’m an ignorant hypocrite because I still eat meat. I just wish all cattle could be treated the way ours were. On my grandparents’ dairy, the calves were raised in pens or stalls until they were old enough to start eating grass, and they did have room to stand and lay down. When they were cows, they were put to pasture. They had loafing sheds for shelter in inclemant weather, but the only time they came into the barn was for milking. And they came running at milking time because that was also when they got hay (sometimes covered in molasses) and grain. But it’s my understanding that cows at most commercial dairies aren’t ever put to pasture. They live their lives in barns, which doesn’t seem right. My mom also says they didn’t pump our cows with hormones and antibiotics. We sold and drank unpasturized milk and never had a problem with E. coli or anything else until some other idjits took over the dairy, and they didn’t clean the milking machines or lines after each milking allowing rotten gunk to build up in them. Their milk made the whole community sick and they weren’t allowed to sell it anymore.

After the dairy changed hands, my mom still raised her own calves for meat. Again, they stayed in pens until they were old enough to eat grass, and then we turn them out. I think we usually waited until they were about 15 or 18 months old before butchering them. And I think it was as humane as possible. The butcher came out to our place and did the killing, so the steer was in comfortable surroundings, no noise or stench of the slaughterhouse, and probably never suspected what was about to happen. I never watched, it was upsetting to me since I was still a young child, but my mom says the steer always went right down dead and doesn’t believe it ever suffered. I don’t know what the beef industry is like, but I know I’ve heard it’s more brutal.

Again, I know our farms weren’t all sunshine and roses; the poor cows were forced to be milked, boo hoo, and the steers were murdered and their flesh consumed, oh we were such bastards, but if you’re going to raise cows for consumption, it seems to me that our way was the best.

Um… so that probably makes me a bigger hypocrite because I still eat the commercially raised beef and cheese and drink the milk, despite the fact that I find the commercial farms reprehensible compared to the farms I grew up with. And I won’t eat veal. Oh… poop.

It’s lunch time. I need a burger.

The funniest thing I think I ever heard was on an episode of Martha Stewert; she was talking about adding a cup of vodka to the boiling water because “it relaxes the lobsters and if you were being boiled alive, wouldn’t you want a drink too?” :smiley:

BTW, fetal veal? ::shuddering:: Although now that I think about it, what’s an egg but a fetal chicken?

I eat veal, but personally i have no issues with animals and morality. I mean i wouldn’t dgo and beat an animal to death myself or cage it or something, but hell it tastes good, and it’s dead so i might as well enjoy!