La viande de veau bientôt de retour en Angleterre...

[Animal 0]

From the Independent online


It's been banished from British menus for nearly 20 years. But now
Janet Street-Porter has spoken out to change our minds about this
most succulent of meats. And celebrity chefs are queing up to join
the campaign

By Martin Hickman
Published: 02 September 2006

Veal stirs the emotion like few other foods; only foie gras can
compete in the public's mind as a clear, open and shut case of animal
cruelty. And in the past, who could really disagree?

Traditionally the male calves of dairy cows, which are too bony for
beef, have been turned into veal in an undeniably unpleasant manner:
reared in the dark in tiny wooden crates too small for them to lie
down or turn around in. Such cramped conditions atrophy the muscles,
producing the tender white meat beloved of gourmands.

We have had little stomach for producing such veal here, but nor have
we taken to the mass export of unwanted calves to the continent. Veal
has become a frowned upon food - banished from the menu of all but a
few restaurants.

Now it is back - or at least it will be, if a newly-formed veal
alliance has its way. A campaign has been launched by farmers and
chefs to put the case for veal to the public on what might seem
perverse to die-hard opponents - animal welfare grounds.

The Good Veal Campaign is promoting not the bad old veal produced in
the UK before the crate system was banned in 1990 but the new veal -
where calves are reputed to live as happy a life as any pig. The
campaign was launched yesterday by River Cottage TV presenter Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall and the cook Sophie Grigson at the Organic
Food Awards in Bristol.

The veal lobby has also been given another lift - by Janet Street
Porter, The Independent on Sunday's editor-at-large, who gave veal
the seal of approval after investigating it for Channel 4's F Word.
In the nine days since the programme, veal sales have risen 45 per
cent at Waitrose in the first week alone. Supporters say British
veal, which is less intensively-reared rose veal, so named because of
its light pink colour, is delicious and wholesome. As versatile as
chicken, they say it is especially liked by children and can be used
in everything from sandwiches to stir fries.

So should we be overturning our national reluctance to veal? And just
how kind are modern farming techniques to calves?

According to Compassion in World Farming, British veal, especially
the organic variety, is now acceptable and it is supporting the Good
Veal Campaign.

But others are less enamoured, pointing out that, regardless of the
demise of the crate system, the dairy industry swells cows with
excess milk and kills their male infants while just a few months old.
To understand how modern veal production works, one must shine a
light on the dark ways of the veal crate, which still operate across
mainland Europe. Under the crate system, bull calves are separated
from their mothers days after birth, placed in boxes measuring 2ft by
4ft and fed on a liquid diet. They live in that wooden box for their
short, anaemic lives - no longer than five months.

For the thousands of bull calves sent to the continent, where veal
has traditionally been prized, there is the added burden of the
journey. Calves just a few days old are packed standing into trucks
for up to 20 hours at a time with few breaks as they rumble their way
to in Holland and France. After animal rights activists succeeded in
banning use of the crate in the UK after 1990, they turned their
attention to the live export trade.

In some of the bitterest clashes between public and police, thousands
of members of the public turned out in the early 1990s to block veal
trucks, ships and planes at Coventry airport, Brightlingsea, in
Essex, Shoreham, in East Sussex, Dover and Plymouth. One woman, Jill
Phipps, was killed in 1995 when she was run over by a lorry outside
Coventry airport.

The protesters failed to prevent the export trade, but saw it stop
when BSE led to a European ban on British cattle. But since the
European Commission approved the lifting of the ban last May, exports
have resumed and as many as 500,000 calves a year are sent abroad.

Supporters of veal insist that unwanted dairy calves should be raised
for meat in Britain, where welfare standards are higher than on the
continent. Here, calves are kept in more spacious conditions. Modern
organic farmers say their animals roam outside and are fed roughage
as well as liquids, and are suckled by older cows from the dairy
herd. They live to six months, twice as long as the slowest growing
chicken, longer than many pigs and lambs.

Helen Browning, who rears organic veal at Eastbrook Farm in
Wiltshire, says: "We have got to relaunch veal and make it clear that
it is produced humanely.

"There is a big opportunity for people to start experimenting with
veal, to eat something that is extremely tasty and help solve an
animal welfare problem."

But veal producers have a difficult job. According to the Meat and
Livestock Commission, just 1 per cent of the public eat veal at home.
Current British veal production is tiny - just 100 tons, 5 per cent
of the 2,000 tons consumed annually. And it is falling, partly
because Britain has ended a special subsidy under the Common
Agricultural Policy subsidy. Between July 2005 and July this year,
the number of slaughtered calves fell from 136 to 21.

The remaining 95 per cent of our veal is imported from Europe, where
welfare standards are lower. Even though a ban on crates across the
EU takes effect next year, campaigners say the continent's farms
still have slatted floors without comfortable resting areas or bedding.

Angelique Davies, the campaigns officer at Compassion in World
Farming, says: "We are encouraged by moves towards commercially
raised calves in the UK that use higher welfare systems. Even when
the veal crate is outlawed in Europe, at the end of 2006, continental
veal systems may often still fall short of UK welfare standards."

Another animal welfare organisation, Viva (Vegetarians International
Voice for Animals) has a different view: organic veal production may
be less cruel but it still does not match the standards for free-
range beef. "There are degrees of cruelty," says Viva's campaigns
director Toni Vernelli, a critic of the UK dairy industry. "Rose veal
is less cruel than white veal but you are still killing a baby and
eating its flesh. To try to tout it as a kind of humane meat as is
hypocritical because they are still animals being slaughtered before
they reach a fraction of their normal life span."

But among chefs such as Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall, such pleading
falls on deaf ears. "They are slaughtered at about six months - old
for any porker," he says. "An average bacon in a supermarket would
have been slaughtered at four or five months." He has chosen to take
on such an unfashionable cause because to duck the issue would be
"feeble". People have a choice about what they want to happen to bull
calves - "if you don't produce organic veal with a high welfare
system then they will either be shot at birth or transported to Europe."

Janet Street-Porter said: "If we drink milk and eat cheese, what do
we think will happen to the male calves produced by a dairy herd?"


Cette recette était incluse avec l'article

From pan to plate in just half an hour

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Pan-to-oven organic veal chops with
lemon and capers

The pan-to-oven method is a quick and neat way of cooking any chop,
and this is one of my favourite recipes. Steam some broccoli while
cooking, and your meal will be ready in less than half an hour.

serves 4

4 organic veal chops
1 lemon
a few sprigs of thyme
a little olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon small capers, rinsed
double cream, to taste

Put the chops in a shallow dish. Add a couple of strips of zest
finely pared from the lemon and a squeeze of its juice (keep the
lemon, you will need more juice later), plus the thyme and a good
slosh of olive oil.

Turn the chops over a few times with the flavourings, cover and leave
to marinate for a couple of hours.

Preheat the oven to 220C/gasmark 7. Place an ovenproof dish, big
enough to hold the chops, in the oven to heat up. Heat a little olive
oil in a large frying pan over a fairly high heat.

Add the chops and brown on one side for just a minute, then on the
other, seasoning them with salt and pepper as they brown. Remove from
the pan with tongs and arrange in the preheated dish. Add the sprigs
of thyme from the marinade, tucking them underneath the chops so that
they don't burn.

Return the frying pan to the heat, add a wine glass full of water and
the juice of half the lemon and use the liquid to deglaze the pan,
scraping up any bits of caramelised meat. Let the liquid bubble until
reduced by half, then tip over the chops. Season well.

Put in the oven and roast for 15-20 minutes, or until the meat is
cooked through and the thinner, fattier ends are lovely and crisp.
Remove the chops from the pan and keep warm.

Taste the pan juices and, if you'd like to intensify the flavour,
boil them down a little. When the flavour is to your liking, add the
capers and a little double cream. Bring to the boil again, then pour
over the chops and serve. Use lemon zest or juice to set off the
flavour of organic veal.

[animo-aequoanimo 0]

Malheureusement, ça ne changera pas grand chose au nombre de vies tuées. Ils mangeaient plus de conchons ou plus de boeuf et maintenant ils en mangeront moins pour manger du veau à la place.