Nearly every time someone brings up cooking with veal in a public setting, you will get all kinds of grief. In fact, you will rarely see it featured on a menu in a restaurant. And it is darned near impossible to find in a store, at least here on the West Coast.
Why? Generally the excuse given for the objection is we are eating baby cows. While there is some newborn veal, you are not going to see that on the market.
In the United States, most veal is processed at 20-24 weeks. For the math challenged, that is 5 to 6 months.
Too young, you say. Well, even though they process regular beef as late as 22 months, they also process as early as 12 months. So, instead of being processed at 5-6 weeks, they can live to be an old fart of 1 1/2 year or so. That make you feel all warm and fuzzy.
Oh yeh, many replace veal in their recipes with chicken. Here’s the story on that. In the United States, your average chicken is processed in 47 days. Yep, 7 weeks. Some as early as 21 days, some are granted a whole 170 days. Roasters grow for 3-5 months. But as you can see, most chickens would envy the live expectancy of a veal cow.
Conclusion. Simple. Veal cattle, if treated humanly, is no harsher than any other animal raised for consumption. The main problem is, once again, people react instead of checking the facts
