Meat and Milk

I have never understood why we did not eat plenty of veal, one of the glories of European cuisine. We must have done at some point. We cannot always have exported the calves, often in rather unpleasant conditions, to the Continent.

Such exports became something of a Eurosceptical cause célèbre in the last days of John Major, and if a real Labour Government had succeeded him then it might have stood up to the European Commission so as to ban the export of live animals to conditions that would themselves have been illegal in the United Kingdom. One worth revisiting for 2015. Ed Miliband and Jon Cruddas, over to you. Creating all the more need to eat it here instead.

And be in no doubt: if you consume any dairy product, then you cannot object to veal, and in fact really have to eat our own variety of it in all its free range pinkness. Unless you would rather that the calves, absolutely necessary for the production of milk, continued to be subjected to a fate a very great deal worse than gambolling about for six to eight months (longer than many chickens, lambs or pigs live before slaughter) before being humanely dispatched to the dinner plate? Shot within a couple of days of birth, perhaps? That is what happens now in order to feed our appetite for butter, cheese and yoghurt.