Finding virtue in veal :Vanessa Farquharson, Weekend Post  http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2916330

More than any other animal rights campaign, the demonization of veal farmers over the past few decades – with images of helpless calves crammed into tiny crates, tethered to prevent them from moving – has been incredibly pervasive.

Back in 1944, the average North American consumer was eating 8.6 pounds of veal each year; in 2004, it dropped to 0.41 pounds, where it remains today. Regardless of how many farmers actually raise calves in such despicable conditions, the stigma has stuck.

But does this mean there’s less of it? Hardly.

What most people don’t realize is that the production of veal doesn’t occur due to consumer demand, but as a byproduct of the dairy industry.

The more cheese, butter, yogourt and ice cream we consume, the more we rely on Holstein heifers (female cows) to produce milk.

Each year, these cows require a break from milking and their udders dry up. To get the milk flowing again, they must be impregnated, which means giving birth to a calf that probably isn’t needed at the farm. If it’s a female, it has the potential to be used for milk production, but chances are its mother won’t be ready to retire as Holsteins are good for about six years of service. If it’s a male, it serves no purpose at all.

In most cases, the calf ends up with three possible fates: It either goes to a veal farm, where it will live for another five to six months; gets slaughtered after two weeks and is marketed as “bob” veal; or is killed almost immediately, with its meat going into pet food.

While vegans may react to this by arguing we should consume less dairy, others believe the solution lies in re-evaluating both the dairy and veal industries to encourage more holistic farming practices.

Mario Fiorucci, owner of The Healthy Butcher in Toronto, insists there’s nothing morally reprehensible about eating meat from a young animal (chickens are typically slaughtered at five to nine weeks, pigs at 22 weeks, veal at six months), as long as it’s raised in a humane environment.

“We should be slaughtering at the age that will create the most value out of that animal,” he says. “Not in a monetary sense, but a holistic one, so we don’t have this glut in the market.”

Fortunately, the notion of sustainable veal is catching on: Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck now only serves humanely raised meat in his restaurants, including veal wiener schnitzel, and New York supermarket chain D’Agostino reports sales of its veal jumped 35% when it began carrying a “certified humane” brand.

In the small town of Paisley, Ont., farmers David and Ellen Weber are raising grass-fed veal on their local pastures. The cows naturally give birth during the spring, with calves suckling throughout the summer and fall before getting butchered in the early winter.

“A lot of people don’t want to buy veal for ethical reasons,” David Weber says, “so we’re trying to eliminate those reasons. But we have to feed our calves for an entire year, which costs more money.”

As well, the cows here are all Black Angus – a breed known for producing top-quality steaks, not milk. Eating the Webers’ veal may be sustainable, but it doesn’t ease the excess supply of Holstein calves.

“With our herd, there’s no connection with the dairy sector,” he says. “We used to raise Holstein heifers conventionally, caring for them until they were ready to be milking cows, but then the [Canada-U.S.] border closed in 2003 with a case of mad cow. We lost so much money that time was right for going in a different direction.”

Weber explains that most dairy farmers aren’t interested in raising their leftover Holstein calves for veal, sustainable or otherwise, because they don’t make great steaks.

Thanks to years of careful breeding, these cows convert almost all of their food energy into milk, not muscle, which is why they tend to have large udders and bony behinds. The reasoning behind force-fed milk diets and confinement stalls is that these methods help transform the lean, tough muscle of a young Holstein into something more tender, and therefore more marketable to the consumer.

But while it may seem as though sustainable veal production is limited to what the Webers are doing with their Black Angus cows, farmers such as Bill Scheurman are proving otherwise.

At first, Scheurman ran a conventional dairy farm, but switched to organic. Now, he runs his operation out of Norwich, Ont., and has also started selling veal to Fiorucci – the meat comes from a calf that’s either a Holstein or an Ayrshire, a breed predominantly suited to dairy production but which can also be used for beef.

“It yielded quite well,” Fiorucci says. “I know another farmer, too, who’s converted his entire farm to cross-breeds from France called Montbeliard. So there’s a potential for dual-purpose breeds that may not be exceptional at beef or exceptional at dairy production, but do fairly well in both, so still have good value.”

Scheurman was willing to take a risk in raising organic veal from his Holstein herd partly because he’d had success years ago making the switch from conventional to organic.

“As farmers, we’re being force-fed in the wrong direction,” he says. “I used to put lots of chemicals on the land because I was told it’s the only way to do things. But then I learned that you can do things naturally, raise animals (veal calves ) more safely and healthily. That’s important because my animals are more than just a number to me.”

And yet, despite Scheurman’s veal getting picked up by The Healthy Butcher, numerous barriers prevent other dairy farmers from following this model – economic circumstances don’t help, nor does the industrial agriculture system, which tends to value quantity over quality. This means dairy farmers have no financial incentive to experiment with other breeds or to use a Holstein for any purpose besides milk.

Part of the solution, therefore, involves the dairy industry re-evaluating its business model and working with veal farmers to create a more sustainable product. But it also comes down to consumers, who must be willing to pay more for humanely raised meat and pay closer attention to their food – and this goes beyond checking for labels that say “natural” or “organic,” or making a sweeping decision to never eat veal again.

“It’s an ongoing process of re-education,” Fiorucci says. “It’s great that more people are drinking organic milk, but they should realize that those cows are having calves once a year, and those calves are almost always dealt with in a very conventional, unsustainable way.”

So maybe there is virtue in Veal !