If we want milk, and cheese, we really should be eating veal as well

As long as there is a dairy industry there will be excess production of calves, and if nobody’s going to eat them, those calves aren’t going to be sent away to live on a farm, like your mum and dad told you your old dog was when you were a kid. Your old dog wasn’t sent away to live on a farm either. And there is no Santa Claus. Sorry, once you get started it’s hard to stop. The point is that the dairy industry relies on calves being born, most of which (and pretty much all the males) are always going to be slaughtered whether we eat veal or not. So if we want milk, and cheese, we really should be eating veal as well. Otherwise all those calves, which are going to die anyway, will simply go to waste. And as long as we eat pink, or rose, veal, which British veal has always tended to be anyway, then the animal welfare issues that are commonly, and inaccurately, associated with all veal production, do not arise. The thing to avoid is white veal, the meat of calves fed exclusively on milk (or, more to the point, milk “products”) and kept in the dark, in spaces too confined to move, in order to keep the meat pale and soft. Why anyone thinks this is a good idea is quite beyond me, because—quite apart from the unspeakable cruelty—the meat produced this way really does taste, at best, of nothing, at worst of stale milk.
~ Sebastian Roach (November 29, 2010)