SC -veal longings

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:
> 
> really and for truely? trust you to know :)....wouldnt really surprise
> me...American meat growers are in a world by themselves (most "lamb" is
> almost a year old by the time we see it, so is it really lamb?). veal may
> SUPPOSED to be little calves in tiny pens fed nothing but milk, but who knows?
> 
>  is there a documentable source that I can wave in peoples faces? (I love
> veal, but enough people object to how they think its been raised that we
> could never serve it here)
> 
> --Anne-Marie, who  is puzzled by people who object to eating some creatures
> but not others, based purely on cuteness factor, etc....(must be the farm
> girl in me coming out :))....

In my massive, ceaseless initiative to use less bandwidth <urp>, I can
answer you and Gyric at the same time. Veal definitions, and the
conditions under which it is produced, vary from place to place, time to
time, and political climate to climate.

According to Larousse (1984 edition, edited by Jennifer Lang but perhaps
written by a semi-anonymous contributor whose opinions in the matter may
or may not differ from those of Prosper Montagné or those of any
semi-anonymous contributors he may or may not have employed), veal is
the meat of more or less unweaned calves slaughtered at from 3-8 months
of age. Andre Simon, in his "Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy", a book
I generally find more reliable than Larousse, sometimes even in
considering French foods, it is stated that veal is the meat of calves,
but draws the distinction between French, Spanish and Italian veal, and
English veal, which, Simon concedes, would not be regarded as veal in France.

On the other hand, since the word used in France for what they consider
to be veal is _veal_, or veau, anyway, and since this word is also used
to designate calves, we can safely deduce that all veal in France is the
meat of unweaned calves slaughtered at that age, but not necessarily
that other calfmeat (for which there seems to be no word in French) is
not veal. In other words, this may reflect common practice, and perhaps
even some legal standard of identity, rather than a definition. 

Since calfmeat other than unweaned baby veal doesn't seem to exist in
France, while it does in England, and where it is, for the most part
called veal, it's possible that the method of milk-feeding calves (while
simultaneously starving them of the iron that would make their flesh
pink or red, egad), it seems somewhat likely the method is a post-Norman
invention, and that, once upon a time, veal was any calfmeat, even in
France.      

Regarding production practices in America, I think the Humane Society
types have largely ended the practice of restraining and inducing anemia
in our veal calves, to produce The Politically Correct American Veal
(Nature Veal being an example, I think), which used to be a brand of
inferior quality in American veal, and which now is being lauded as
better than the veal produced by those sinister Europeans. It's an
interesting use of marketing science, turning what used to be regarded
as a weakness of our veal industry into an advantage. I remember fairly
recent public protests in front of several New York City restaurants
(and does everyone know that nearby Long Island is a major veal producer
for the U.S.?) which were countered by various restaurateurs holding
press conferences to state that they use pink American veal, which, they
claimed, was the equal of European veal in every respect but color, and
by other restaurateurs who claimed that their clientele wanted real
veal, which could not be obtained in America. Shrug. I'd be curious to
know which organizations backed some of these massive, well-organized
protests: The American Restaurant Association, seeking publicity and
public favor for their industry, The American Veal Breeders' Board, or
whatever it's called, looking to eliminate competition from Europe, some
European Veal Producer Cartel, looking to do the same, but evidently
failing, or perhaps it really was some kind of Humane organization.
Maybe all of the above.

Never mind that we probably pump our All-Natural, Grain-fed, Unfettered
and Non-abused Veal full of hormones.

Adamantius   
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com