AIBU to ask why it’s unacceptable to eat Veal, but Lamb is fine?

[Wills]

I’ve just returned from a holiday in France where Veal is as common as Lamb yet back here Veal is a big no no but lamb is acceptable? I’m not keen on Beef or Veal, just interested in what the difference is in terms of eating baby animals?

YABU. It's unacceptable to eat either.

If you drink milk, eat yogurt or cheese, then you shouldn't have an issue with veal. It's a by-product of the dairy industry.
It's all rose veal now as they aren't allowed to crate the animals- since 1992 in the UK and 2006 in the EU. British veal has higher welfare standards.

Why would people buy pets to be put down ? I think it’s equally cruel having dogs that aren’t allowed to run off the lead or house cats or lone rabbits.
A farm animal isn’t a pet. They are looked after and have good lives and then the have a swift dispatch.
A wild animal has a life that’s full of uncertainty, possible misery and usually an illness or being eaten by something else. That’s got to hurt more than an abattoir.

It's not at all unacceptable to eat veal.

It is unacceptable to be a complete hypocrite about which animals you eat and which you get all self righteous and annoying about.

Exactly. It's like people cringing at the idea other cultures eat dogs and cats. If you wouldn't eat a dog but you'd eat a cow then you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Agree. You can't complain about people abusing puppies and kittens if you eat meat. There no nuance in anything.

Eating ethically farmed meat is also exactly the same as eating factory farmed meat shipped from turkey. No difference.

🤨

It's like people cringing at the idea other cultures eat dogs and cats.

It's less the fact that they eat meat. More the fact that there are a dozen crammed into a single metal cage sweltering by the side of the road. Dangled of motorbikes by their legs to be transported. Then tortured to death.

Vegans can't see the difference between a lamb in a field and the above.

I'm not sure where to start with this one. I can't believe that anyone believes that farm animals have a 'good life'. Anyone who has seen a lame dairy cow shortly before they receive a bullet to the head because they're now surplus to requirements could vouch for what an utterly miserable existance they have.

Agree with PPs. If you eat meat, you should be ok with veal, dog and cat meat. Any other view is hypocritical.

They are looked after and have good lives and then the have a swift dispatch.

Actually it’s usually a very long, slow, painful, loud, inefficient, traumatic and messy slaughter.

Have you actually seen this with your own eyes? Are you a vet?

I choose not to eat any dead babies. Even if they're grown up . I don't normally mention this to anyone, but you did ask.

I wouldn't eat either

I always wonder about this myself. Personally I can't even drink milk after they told me how it's farmed!

Did anyone ask you? The OP presumably already knows that some people are vegetarians or vegans and roughly why they make that choice.

She asked why people who refuse to eat one sort of young mammal on humanitarian grounds are happy to eat another sort of young(ish) mammal.

She's had a variety of answers, some of which seem reasonable to her.

God Almighty

What an odd question. Vets don’t work in slaughterhouses. But the people who do, have higher rates of depression, and suffer from perpetrator-induced traumatic syndrome (like PTSD but for people who themselves commit violent acts)

Does anyone truly think terrified animals can be swiftly and somehow “humanely” killed, en mass, by methods that frequently miss or fail?

Humans are such hypocrites. There is no reason to eat one animal but not another, pigs are smarter than dogs, lambs are babies just as calves are.

When undercover footage of miserable farmed animals in hideous conditions come out in the news everyone is outraged for about 10 minutes - or they’re rooting for the sheep who escaped the truck on the way to slaughter - then it’s back to a lamb roast for dinner.

Neither is fine but resting veal is even more horrific than the rest of the meat industry

Rearing and killing

Actually, it’s a legal requirement for UK slaughterhouses to have an Official Veterinarian (OV) as well as CCTV in all areas where animals are held and killed. Google the role of the OV and you’ll see they are highly trained and have wide-ranging powers.

But I’ll take your ignorance as no, you’ve never seen it for yourself.

We send around 600 lambs directly to the abattoir every year in batches of around 50 -60 every fortnight from September through to late Feb

They have to be at the local collection centre (3 miles away) for 11am and usually we get our kill sheet (an email from the abattoir detailing the dead weight and condition score of each carcass) through by about 4pm.

The abattoir works very efficiently so unless there is a breakdown of some sort on the line we are fairly confident our lambs are processed within an hour or so of getting there.

Anyone who knows anything about this stuff knows that it is absolutely paramount that animals remain calm before death as otherwise the stress hormones taint the meat and its virtually unusable.

They would also know that every abattoir has an vet on site who is responsible for welfare. If an animal is in a poor condition and not fit for slaughter the farmer who sent it receives a bill for it to be destroyed and disposed of by the vet.

Your posts just make you look like everything you think you know, you learnt from YouTube

So the YouTube videos showing the distressed animals is AI or something? Lies. It's a barbaric industry, and people like you aren't fooling most of us any more.

There's obviously different standards of animal welfare. Everyone knows this.

I believe pp. I believe the videos showing cruelty. There are tens of billions of livestock in the world. Of course treatment varies!

I’ve seen that kind of footage. It’s generally either not from the UK (other countries’ welfare standards can vary hugely, including the US) or outdated. Eg it usually shows pigs being manually stunned with electrodes to the head when they are stunned until death with gas in modern facilities. They aren’t actually handled by humans at all until they are dead. Similarly chickens are no longer shackled upside down in lines while conscious, but that’s usually still what the footage shows.

It’s also worth remembering that animals have no concept of death. There are strict rules about not slaughtering animals in sight of one another in case they get distressed. However, experiments which measured levels of stress hormones in animals which were allowed to see other animals being killed found no increase. The concept of abbatoirs to us is abhorrent because we imagine how we would feel, but that is because we are scared of death in a way animals simply can’t be.

Similar tactics to the abbatoir videos are used with footage of lab animals. Most of it is either old footage of conditions which are no longer allowed, or overseas facilities.

And no, this isn’t dismissing the contents of the videos: it’s pointing out that they are often misleading and come with their own agenda.

I wouldn't eat a dog or cat, not because they are cuter or fluffier than sheep but because they are carnivores and in the case of dogs absolutely revolting (they eat their own and other animals' shit and vomit fgs).

Waitrose sell it - in chop and mince form.

Mmmmmm