No milk or meat without a calf
More than 330,000 calves are raised and slaughtered every year in Belgium. The reason there are so many calves in our country is simple: like us, cows are mammals. To produce milk, they have to be pregnant.
Dairy farms, seeking to maintain a continuous supply of milk, therefore repeatedly inseminate dairy cows. This practice leads to the birth of hundreds of thousands of calves in our country every year. While most female calves will in turn become dairy cows, male calves are fattened for meat production.
Because the milk produced by cows is intended entirely for human consumption, calves are brutally separated from their mothers just a few hours after birth. This separation and the loss of the emotional bond can cause intense distress for both cows and their calves. It is not uncommon to see mothers searching for their young, bellowing in distress for several days.
Locked up alone, far from their mothers
Our footage shows the cramped individual pens in which calves are placed after being torn away from their mothers. When located outdoors, these pens can take the form of plastic hutches surrounded by a metal barrier. This forced isolation is a source of stress for calves, who are playful and social animals. On one of the farms filmed by our investigators, the calves were kept in small boxes whose partitions prevented any visual or tactile contact. Such housing conditions are contrary to the law unless justified by exceptional circumstances, such as disease.
Their ordeal in fattening units
Two weeks after birth, calves are sent to fattening units. Transported while their immune systems are still vulnerable, many calves fall ill. Some even die during this first journey.
Once there, they are placed in individual boxes barely larger than their bodies. European legislation allows farmers to confine these young animals individually during the first eight weeks of their lives.
Our footage shows individual boxes inside a fattening unit. They give the calves very little room to move. Here too, the animals suffer from isolation, and the few interactions they can have with their peers are severely restricted by the barriers and partitions. Our investigation documents calves compulsively licking the bars of their boxes – an oral stereotypy linked to their early separation from their mothers.
In this farm, as in most fattening units, the calves have no enrichment, no straw, and are forced to stand and lie on hard slatted flooring (open flooring designed to let excrement fall through). Our footage shows wooden slats covered in excrement, with gaps so wide that the animals’ hooves can become trapped.
Un unbalanced diet
Because consumers expect pale veal (white or pink), calves are fed a diet – mainly powdered milk replacer – that contains very little iron, to prevent their flesh from turning red.
This choice, driven by commercial preferences, runs counter to the young calf’s basic needs. A healthy diet must contain sufficient fibre and iron and be adapted to the calf’s physiology.
As a result of their unbalanced diet and weakened immune systems, many calves suffer from frequent diarrhea. Our investigation reveals partitions and bars covered in diarrhoea, as well as calves whose hindquarters are heavily soiled.
Packed into group housing
After a period of individual confinement lasting up to eight weeks, calves are moved into group pens, as required by European legislation. But their living conditions barely improve: four to five calves are grouped together in pens of only a few square metres each, with no outdoor access. Such conditions do not allow for social behaviour, comfortable rest or meaningful interaction with other calves – all fundamental needs denied from the very first weeks of life.
Enrichment and straw are absent in the fattening units we filmed, as is the case on the vast majority of farms. Calves are most often kept on hard slatted flooring, which can cause leg injuries and locomotion problems such as lameness.
Killed young
Around 12% of calves die before they even reach slaughter age – a figure higher than the average mortality rate across all farmed animals (3 to 5%). Given the very young age of these calves, this high mortality rate can only be attributed to poor housing and transport conditions.
The calves who survive these conditions are slaughtered before the age of eight months – the youngest from just six months old – so that their flesh can be sold as “veal”, even though these animals have a natural life expectancy of around twenty years.
Some are raised and killed in Belgium, while others are transported abroad in overcrowded livestock trucks to be fattened and slaughtered there. The unluckiest are sent to distant destinations beyond Europe, often in extremely harsh conditions.
Alternatives exist!
GAIA is releasing this investigation also to encourage consumers to turn away from veal and dairy products and to choose plant-based alternatives instead.
