Do you know what veal really is?
Do you know the kind of misery and suffering baby calves are subjected to (from life to death) just so you or someone else can enjoy a slice of "veal"?
This video, "Crated Cruelty: The Hidden Price of Veal," is narrated by Bob Parker and shows undercover footage from Mercy For Animals (MFA).
The important things you need to know:
- Baby calves are direct byproducts of the dairy industry, since dairy cows must be repeatedly impregnated (often artificially re-impregnated) to produce milk.
- The male offspring of these dairy cows are dragged away from their mothers after birth, never to receive the nurture and affection from the mothers that they need.
- The male calves are shipped off to veal factory farms where they are chained by their necks inside 2-feet wide wooden stalls (aka veal crates). The calves can't even turn around or lie down comfortably in this kind of narrow confinement.They never breathe fresh air or feel grass and never get to run or play.
photo credit: http://www.animalwritings.com/archive/2005_02_01_blog_archive.asp
- Besides saving space, there is another reason behind such cruel confinement. Veal is valued for its tenderness, and immobilizing and restricting the calves to movement leads to muscle deterioration.
- Thus, the baby calves are also fed an iron-deficient formula that forces them to be borderline-anemic. The baby animals suffer from ulcers, pneumonia, lameness, and diarrhea.
photo credit: http://www.all-creatures.org/sof/plate-veal.html
- The calves only live 18 to 20-week before they are sent off to slaughter. Can you imagine if a human baby were treated the same way and if its live was also ended at only 4 to 5 months old?
- The American Veterinary Medical Association opposes chaining calves in restrictive crates and five U.S. states (California, Michigan, Maine, Arizona, and Colorado), as well as all 27 countries in the European Union, have outlawed the use of veal crates.
photo credit: http://www.rrrina.com/
- Costco and Giant Eagle grocery stores continue to sell veal from these cruel veal farms. You can send polite emails to Costco's CEO, James Sinegal, at jsinegal@costco.com and Giant Eagle's CEO David Shapira, at david.shapira@gianteagle.com
- As the Mercy for Animals video above shows, cruelty to farm animals also come in the form of physical abuse by workers and handlers.
- http://www.mercyforanimals.org/veal/
- Animal Rights Group Releases Video From Veal Farm
- http://www.noveal.org/
Dear reader, I trust that you will make an informed and compassionate decision the next time you think about veal. However, because dairy cows will always be in demand for their milk, there will continuously be baby calves being born in the farming industry.
Avoiding veal is only the first step to sparing them from a lifetime of suffering and pain-- grocery stores, restaurants, and policy makers must be informed and pressured by the public as well, so that permanent changes can be made to help baby calves live happy, healthy lives.
photo credit: http://www.puzzlewood.net/News.html
photo credit: http://lifeisfare.wordpress.com/2009/09/page/2/
Sept 1, 2010 UPDATE.
As of yesterday, August 31, 2010 Costco Wholesale announced that it will no longer carry veal from Buckeye Veal farm and other farms that condemn calves to the crate-and-chain method. See article here:
However, other types of cruelty involved in veal production and farming are not eliminated-- also, even if crates are not used, the calves are not guaranteed to live in cruelty-free conditions.
