Rock Salt reviews rose veal
Posted on: Nov 02 2012
We sent a sample of rose veal to food blogger Rock Salt for her to try, you can read about her cooking experience here:
"Just so that you know, this is a review of a product of which I was sent a free sample. The opinions in the post are, as ever, mine, and the review is honest. Please note my Patrick Stewart-worthy sentence arrangement in the first line there.
Veal is a meat subject to a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding. It’s understandable, too – the cruelty of the veal trade has been well publicised, with consumers hearing the story of calves being kept held in constrictive crates that don’t allow them to move, in order to produce a white coloured meat. What many people don’t know is that these crates were outlawed in the UK and Europe in 2006, and in fact the welfare standards for veal calves in the UK has been considerably higher than that of the EU since the 1990s. In the UK, veal calves must have sufficient space to move around, a proper diet including roughage, iron and fibre and proper bedding to rest on. The results of this better welfare is a pink meat, rather than white, which is known as rose veal. The Freedom Food website has an excellent document, giving more information on this, and you can find it here.
The other common misconception is that veal is from baby cows. People, we eat lamb like nobody’s business, and a lamb is slaughtered at about five or six months. Chickens are in for the chop at just 46 days, and nobody seems to mind that. Rose veal is from animals at about eight months old, making it practically a teenager by cow standards. On the flip side, the situation at present is that male calves from dairy cows are killed at a day old, because they can’t be raised for either meat or milk, and as such they’re a ‘waste product’. A living, breathing waste product. If you drink milk, eat cheese or enjoy any other branch of the dairy industry, you should be eating veal.
I think that’s probably enough of the heavy stuff, but here are some links if you’d like to find out more you can visit the RSPCA Freedom Food website, or read this article on the John Penny site, on the case for veal. These people are more knowledgable than I am, and the Freedom Food website also gives you the option to ask any questions you might have."
To read the rest of her blog post click here.