“Veal” is the term used for the flesh of calves who have suffered from birth to produce a type of “luxury” meat
“Veal” is just a polite word for the flesh of a baby cow. When walking through a supermarket aisle or scanning a restaurant menu, consumer language often obscures reality, with words like “beef”, “pork”, and “poultry” distance us from the living beings behind the meals. Another one is “veal”, which is simply a euphemism for the flesh of a cow’s baby, a young calf slaughtered often just weeks or months after birth. Behind the soft texture and delicate flavour praised by food enthusiasts lies one of the most inherently cruel practices in modern animal agriculture.
The journey of calves raised for “veal” begins with a traumatic separation from their mothers. In dairy farming, cows must continuously give birth to produce milk for human consumption. Shortly after birth, often within hours or a few short days, the newborn calves are forcibly taken away from their mothers. This separation causes distress to both animals. Mother cows have been documented calling, bellowing, and searching for their taken offspring for days, while the newborn calves, deprived of maternal bonding, warmth, and natural nursing, experience acute fear and stress from their earliest moments of life.
The Forgotten Males of the Dairy Industry
The “veal” industry is a direct by-product of the dairy industry. Because cows only produce milk when they have recently given birth, dairy farms require a continuous cycle of pregnancy and calving to keep milk flowing. This creates an ongoing surge of newborn animals every year. While female calves are typically retained to eventually replace older dairy cows in the milking herd, male calves, often referred to in the industry as “bobby calves”, are incapable of producing milk. Also, because dairy breeds like Holsteins have been selectively bred over generations specifically for high milk yield rather than muscular meat production, male dairy calves are considered unsuitable and unprofitable for traditional “beef” farming.
As a result, millions of male calves born into the dairy system are treated as worthless waste products from the day they are born. In many parts of the world, these unwanted male calves are killed shortly after birth, either directly on the farm or shortly after arrival at a slaughterhouse. Known as “slaughter at birth” or “early life destruction,” this practice sees days-old calves shot or given lethal injections simply because maintaining them yields no financial return. Their bodies may be processed into low-grade animal feed, fertiliser, or rendered down for industrial uses. For some of those who survive their first week, their fate often involves being shipped off to livestock auctions where they are sold for negligible prices. Transported long distances without adequate shelter, hydration, or maternal care, these fragile infants often suffer from severe hypothermia, dehydration, and respiratory illnesses before ever reaching a facility.
A Life of Confinement and Deliberate Deprivation
The male calves who are not killed immediately after birth or shipped somewhere to be killed will experience a short and sad life designed exclusively to supply the “veal” market. The primary goal of intensive “veal” production is to produce meat that is exceptionally pale, tender, and soft. To achieve these specific aesthetic qualities demanded by consumers, farms subject calves to extreme confinement and deliberate nutritional manipulation. In traditional crate systems (though banned in some regions), calves are kept in narrow stalls barely wider than their own bodies. For the entirety of their brief lives, usually lasting between 16 and 22 weeks (in the UK, from six to eight months), these young animals are tethered or enclosed in spaces so constrained that they cannot turn around, walk, run, stretch their limbs, or engage in natural social behaviour with other calves. This forced immobility is entirely intentional, as restricting physical movement prevents muscle development, keeping the calf’s meat unnaturally tender.
Equally cruel is the diet forced upon these calves. Naturally, a calf would consume its mother’s nutrient-rich milk and gradually transition to grazing on grass, solid forage, and roughage, which allows their complex digestive system to develop healthily. In contrast, calves raised for “white” or “formula-fed” veal flesh are fed an exclusive liquid diet composed of milk substitute powder mixed with water. This liquid is deliberately formulated to be deficient in iron and essential dietary fibre. By keeping the calf chronically anaemic, producers prevent the formation of myoglobin, the iron- and oxygen-binding protein that gives healthy muscle tissue its natural dark red colour. This induced anaemia creates the trademark pale pink flesh sought after in high-end cuisine.
This iron-deficient, liquid-only diet inflicts severe physical suffering on the young animals. Lacking roughage, the calves’ rumens cannot develop properly, leading to chronic digestive pain, ulcers, and persistent diarrhoea. To cope with the overwhelming psychological distress of social isolation, separation from mothers, physical confinement, and unnatural feeding, calves killed for “veal” frequently exhibit abnormal stereotypic behaviours. They can often be seen compulsively biting their stalls, licking wood or metal bars, and performing repetitive tongue-rolling motions. By the time they are loaded onto trucks for slaughter at just four to five months old, their bodies are weak. And, of course, they will be deprived of their lives when they are still babies.
These are some of the things that are wrong with “veal”, but any type of meat production will also have many wrong things, as raising animals for food or fibre is intrinsically wrong, regardless of the species or age of the victims.
