The real deal about veal
Jennifer Bain, Toronto Star, 2007.04.04
The real deal about veal; The Ontario Veal Association president opens her barn for a tour, encouraging butchers, supermarkets, chefs and consumers to learn more about this lean red meat
Ontario farmers want you to know how they do – and don’t – produce veal.
They house the calves in hutches, group pens or individual stalls with lots of light (natural and artificial) – not in teeny, darkened crates. They give most of them an unlimited mixture of corn-based grain feed (a minority get mainly milk replacer) and constant access to water.
Grain-fed veal calves are raised to a hefty 650 to 700 pounds. They’re about seven months old when they’re slaughtered. Milk-fed veal calves are raised to 450 to 500 pounds and slaughtered when they’re about five months.
Farmers abide by the government’s “recommended Codes of Practice For the Care and Handling of Veal Calves,” and the Ontario Veal Association’s quality assurance program.
“There’s still some bad publicity out there,” acknowledges veal farmer and association president Judy Dirksen. “But hey, they’re not raised in the dark, they’re not sad little waifs, they’re not even little.”
Seventy per cent of our veal calves are grain-fed and produce dark pink meat that’s tender and mildly beefy. The other 30 per cent is milk-fed, producing meat that’s ivory to light pink, tender, subtle-tasting and more expensive.
Traditionally, it was the Italians, French and other Europeans driving our veal market. Now upscale restaurants are experimenting with veal, and curious home cooks are trying out this leaner red meat.
“If you’re looking to add a fresh, locally grown protein to your diet,
Ontario veal should be on your grocery list,” advises association executive director Jennifer Haley.
The association – which represents about 450 veal farms, mainly family operated – has been beefing up its website, educating butchers, convincing supermarkets to carry more veal cuts (which are the same as beef) and even putting on a six-course veal luncheon for the media.
It reports that Ontario veal has a farm-gate value of $110 million and an economic impact of $450 million. Yet many of us are clueless about veal production. So Dirksen offers a tour of her grain-fed veal farm here, west
of Elora.
Let’s start with the real basics. Cows are either raised for the dairy or
beef industry. In “dairying,” heifers (girls) are coveted and bulls (boys)
don’t have much use. They used to be destroyed at birth but now most are sold to veal producers when they’re eight to 10 days old.
Farmers opt to raise either grain-fed or milk-fed veal calves. The more
common grain-fed calves get milk or milk replacer for six to eight weeks (they’re weaned when they’re about 175 pounds). Next they get corn-based grain feed, roughage (usually hay), water and vitamins, minerals and protein supplements. Less common, and more expensive to raise, are milk-fed calves who live mainly on milk replacer, a liquid milk-based diet similar to infant formula. They, too, get water, some roughage (coarse grains) and vitamins, minerals and protein supplements.
Farmers step in at different stages. Dirksen and her husband Dick
experimented with newborns, but now buy calves when they’re about 300 pounds, 12 to 15 weeks old, and weaned. They raise them until they’re about 700 pounds, 7 months old and ready for slaughter.
We chat among the calves – Holsteins or Holstein crosses – in the Dirskens’ “finishing barn.” It’s a conventional barn with an insulated ceiling and lots of natural light. When it gets hot, the sides slide up and down (meeting in the middle) to boost air flow. The calves are grouped by age and size. Pens are 545 square feet and hold about 15 animals.
The Dirksens raise about 450 veal calves a year. Right now they have 140 who socialize in group pens, drink unlimited water and nibble on hay and corn- protein supplement feed.
They’re raised to about 700 pounds. For their meat to qualify as veal, they must weigh less than 396 pounds when “dressed.” (That means when their carcasses are hanging, gutted and skinned, in the cooler.) If the weight goes over, the meat is sold as ungraded beef and fetches less money.
The calves are calm but curious, swivelling to watch us as we walk by. “Holsteins are very inquisitive,” reports Dirksen. “If a Holstein doesn’t have a look when you walk by, you might suspect it’s sick.”
She’s excited by what she sees as “endless opportunities” for veal – a lean meat that comes in smaller portions than beef. But Dirksen knows there’s much to be done in the education department.
Who knows whether U.S. chef/Food Network star Anthony Bourdain had ever toured a veal farm when he wrote this in a recipe-packed veal chapter in 2004′s Les Halles Cookbook: “It’s not nice what they do to calves to make that pale, tender, and attractive meat we so love. But if I tasted that good after being locked up and immobilized in a dark shed, I wouldn’t blame anyone for trying.”
American chef/author Jay Weinstein also takes aim at veal in 2006′s The Ethical Gourmet: How to Enjoy Great Food That is Humanely Raised, Sustainable, Nonendangered, and That Replenishes the Earth.
“With the exception of the small amount of humanely raised meat, sold mostly by mail order, veal is produced in reprehensible ways. I won’t go into the details, because by now they’re widely known,” writes Weinstein, who uses veal bones to make “ethical brown stocks.”
Dirksen takes the continuing veal controversy in stride: “If you don’t know about something, find out about it. Don’t assume everything you hear is true.”
And, of course, finding out about food means eating it – so we did at the association’s recent luncheon. It hired executive chef Sean Simons to oversee a six-course veal tasting menu at MEATing, a popular restaurant at Yonge and Eglinton.
“I find people are actually going for veal a little bit more,” Simons
reports.
Posted by FFC on July 19th, 2009 :: Filed under Consumers,Education and public awareness,Housing,Veal
Tags :: animal care, cattle, dairy cattle, farm tours, Farmers, meat, Ontario, Veal
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