London - For years veal was rejected by consumers as unethical meat.
But food writer Prue Leith has declared it is time to welcome it back into our kitchens, writing: “Veal chops are my best thing and I want to stop feeling bad about that.”
The 74-year-old, author of Leith’s Cookery Bible, suggested that using young dairy bulls for meat was a way to keep organic farms going.
“If we are ever to give up chemical fertilisers, we’ll need animals to fertilise the land: no animals equals more artificial fertiliser,” she wrote in the Spectator. “And if we want [organic] milk, butter and cream, we need to eat the unproductive bull calves.”
Veal is meat from the male offspring of dairy cows. While female calves are reared for milk, males are slaughtered at a few months old. They cannot be reared for beef as adult dairy bulls’ meat is not deemed good enough to sell.
Phil Brooke, of Compassion in World Farming, said using the calves for veal “prevents them from being shot at birth as they are unwanted by the dairy industry”.
Campaigners in the 1980s revealed some calves were kept out of sunlight in “crates” to make their meat white and tender. But veal crates were outlawed in the UK in 1990 and organic farmers now follow strict welfare guidelines.
Leith also said pasture-fed meat is healthier, adding: “Yes, it costs a bit more?…but according to recent research it is higher in beneficial fats and antioxidants than factory-farmed meat.”
A National Farmers Union spokesman said it supports “any initiative that increases the value of dairy bull calves”.
But a spokesman for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said all veal was unethical. - Daily Mail