Traditional white veal production confines calves in individual crates on iron-deficient diets. Welfare reforms and rose veal production offer significant improvements.
Veal welfare reform is a case study in how legislation, consumer pressure, and alternative production systems can combine to transform an industry. The crate ban eliminated the most egregious welfare failures; rose veal provides a commercially viable high welfare alternative. The remaining welfare problems are export of UK and EU dairy male calves to lower-welfare jurisdictions, and the continued killing of male dairy calves at birth when markets for rose veal are insufficient. Supporting rose veal markets creates economic incentive to keep calves alive and raise them humanely rather than killing them as unwanted by-products of dairy production.