Around 20 years ago, the founders of Alternative Meats were inspired to put in a lot of work raising public awareness about eating British Rose Veal. A tender and tasty meat from male dairy calves raised free range on a natural diet to almost 12 months of age, so longer than commercially reared chicken, lamb and pork.
The predicament of British Dairy Farmers is dreadful, the sad situation being that when a dairy cow produces a calf in order to give us milk, there is a 50% chance of producing a bull calf which is sadly of no value to the farmer. Historically these bull calves have been destroyed within days of being born.
These bull calves are reared to in excess of 400kg looking fully grown, and are reared outside in summer and in large straw barns in winter, naturally ruminating, some are fed milk twice a day, some a cereal ration, but these balanced diets result in a pink or rose colour to the meat.
This is very different to White Veal which may be familiar to those who have travelled on the Continent, created purposely by an unbalanced and deficient diet.
Eating our British Rose Veal is to enjoy a quality, tasty and tender meat and provide farmers with a good return thereby encouraging them to utilise their dairy bull calves, a previously wasted resource. In a world of dwindling resources and rising food prices this has got to make sense.
Celebrity Chefs such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Gordon Ramsay and Rick Stein have all promoted British Rose Veal over the years.
We have 2 sources of Rose Veal at Real Food Hub. Alternative Meats have been working with farmers since early 2003 to help promote Rosé Veal from Holstein dairy farmers to their customers.
Neil Weston of Kersdown Barton Farm keeps a dairy herd of Pedigree Jersey cows, the farm having been run by the family since 1904.
The cows are milked once a day and graze outside for most of year on grass and come inside in the winter when the ground becomes too wet. Then they are house on to deep bedded straw and fed a diet of just grass silage. Their female calves producing replacements for the dairy herd and the Bull calves are used for the Rose Veal.
Neil explains, “Our ethos is to try and create a system whereby we rely on grass to feed our animals. As the West Country is a perfect place to grow grass and grass is a natural feed for cows.”
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“We rear our Jersey and Guernsey bull calves to produce lean Rose Veal, instead of having them suffer the same fate as many other dairy bull calves by being shot at birth.
The calves are reared outdoors in the summer months groups of 24 from 3 weeks of age then reared indoors during the winter when ground becomes wet in groups of 12 with ample space and bedded on straw. Thus they are Free Range. They are given a balanced diet that contains all the nutrients they need and are fed milk twice a day. This produces rose veal (pink meat), not white veal created purposely by an unbalanced and deficient diet.”
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