Saturday field trip: Veal farm

Today we went to a very well managed veal farm.

We discussed the crap the veal industry gets, when it's really not that bad.

People envision lil baby cows tied up so they can't move. That may be the case with bad apple farms, but most well managed farms don't do that because that's just plain WRONG.



You see these babies are kept in separate pens for the first 8 weeks of life so they can get vet treatment. We spoke to the farm vet who was cool.
Then the babies get moved into pens in groups because baby cows want to and will be healthier if they stay in groups.



The babies are fed diets with proper amounts of iron, but not enough that their meat turns red.

We did some research and it's pretty clear that veal farms cost the most to maintain! That's because each baby needs vaccines and a lot of vet care, and they all need their own pens. It limits the amount of protein production a farm can yield.

(One baby escaped!)

The babies are not sold to meat processing places as BABIES. But they are sold at around 500 lbs. That's like, 20 weeks old I think.



Here are some big boy bulls, that are INTACT. I will say I was intimidated by them.... oh yes. They are near term. That's how big they get when they are sold as veal.

(The babies have space to move, but the space is limited mostly because of the size of the farm. Not all the animals can roam free like dogs or cats or organic farms. Most farms are limited in size like this or the animals are a little crowded)


The babies like to lick!



The big boys are big and scary...


And we talked about nutrition and all that jazz. It turns out "bad" farms produce veal that is grain fed and sell it at the same high price as a milk-fed veal. That's cheating. Because milk-fed veal, like these ones, are the highest quality and grain-fed are the cheapest. Milk-fed makes the muscle color whitish.



Marcho farms created their own veal milk replacer formula that is extremely successful. We spoke to the doctor who conducted the research and came up with the formula. Smart people.

So yeah, you can think whatever you want to think about veal farms. All I can say is that we went to this particular farm because it is known worldwide for its humane production of veal and it's high quality. It was really well managed and shows that not all of the veal industry is bad. But there are certainly bad farms out there, just like there are bad pet shops, bad meat packagers, bad schools and bad people.