milk-where does it come from?

[dogcatcher]

Drinking milk in China is a new thing - it has been copied from the West; this has pushed up the demand for grain to feed the cattle, hence last year's hike in world grain prices (We were paying £200 ton at one stage but this has since fallen back).

When I was a young teenager I worked with dairy cattle during the school holidays. I saw nothing cruel in the production of milk. Then there was still a demand for bobby calves for English pink veal; this was raised in the barn or in the field. None went to crates. The demand for pink veal has gone thanks to the campaign against white veal, this means that male calves are now often destroyed - rather like young males in the poultry rearing business. If we could re-generate the demand for English veal then we could save this waste and the dairy farmer could get a few more shillings.

[chickenchaser]

They have been using and talking about English pink veal a lot on Saturday kitchen, lately so it will probably become more popular and easier to get hold of, dogcatcher

I remember when St Delia was cooking with white eggs and English housewives cleared the shelves!!

[Bollybarb]

Yes and didn't Janrt Street Porter rasie some veal on the F word? She allowed them out for a 'gambol' before their end.

[saint-spoon]

It’s sad how counterproductive the campaign against veal crates has been for the pink veal industry, it’d be like closing the entire pate industry because of the cruelty involved in fras gras.
Furthermore it would appear that in the modern day pink veal won’t become a mainstream meat product unless the supermarkets start to stock it which I don’t think is going to happen any time soon; the like of pestcos will happily stock “standardâ€

[Babycakes]

Sorry for beng a bit thick but could someone tell me the difference between pink and white veal??

[saint-spoon]

one's pink and the other is white. it's all tyo do with veal crates, the whiter stuff is kept in them in horrible foreign coutries and the pink stuff isn't. (i think)

[lou]

We send our male calves over to those countries to be reared as the white veal

[Babycakes]

Thanks, sorry for being a bit thick LoL
So it's just differnt coloured meat then?

[chickenchaser]

I think white veal calves are kept in small crates, like battery chickens and only fed milk until slaughter.

Pink veal calves are allowed more room, sometimes outside, and a more normal diet.

[dogcatcher]

Using the older terms English or pink veal is the meat of a normally raised dairy bull calf who lived in a strawed barn until slaughtered at about 6 months.
Dutch or white veal is crate raised veal where the calf has little room to move and as others have said, it is comparable to battery hens.

So pink veal is really a waste product of the dairy industry and we should eat the meat. I found one website of a veal farmer that explains it better than I can http://bocaddonfarmveal.com/aboutus.aspx

[Mo]

White veal is white because the calves are anaemic, I think. Factory farmed and horrible.
Babycakes, you might be in a position to do some good here. Does your husband have any say in what is stocked in his shop.
If he stocked and promoted pink veal, it would save calves from veal crates.

[Babycakes]

Mo, I wish!! He has no say whatsoever - he is literally a hired hand - has to go with what the 21 year old shop girl says because she's in charge, and that's not going down to well as he was serving his apprenticeship before she was born.., but that's a whole other story lol

[Pearl'n"Ruby]

I took a bunch of kids to see a dairy farm and was horrified by the fact that the milk producing cows were kept inside all the time on concrete floors which were occasionally sprayed and then scraped with some automatic device to clear the poo. They were led straight from this feeding shed to the milking parlour and only had a raised concrete shelf thing at the back of the stalls to rest on. Disgusting!! Have only bought soya milk since. A VERY educational visit!!

[juicylucy]

Im on soya milk too

[Effie]

I knew I shouldn't have read all of this thread.

Sorry but soya milk is foul. Not tried rice milk, might be better.

Ho, hum.

I can barter raw milk from my friend who has a dairy farm, as long as the EU don't find out. At least I know how her cows are kept, I can talk to them if I like

in my hay-day, I produced a pint a day and made a wicked white sauce - perhaps this is the way forward