Hans

@hans1671102377 · 05 Apr 2023

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One and a half million calves in pieces

At Keuringsdienst van waarde (KRO-NCRV), a look at the VanDrie Group slaughterhouse, a beautiful view of the bonery. The family business from Uddel cuts one and a half million calves to pieces there every year. All calves left over from the Dutch dairy farm end up in Uddel. That's 900,000. The remaining 600,000 come from Denmark and Germany. After 'processing', 95 percent of their meat goes to Italy and France. Dutch people don't like calves.

Presenter Ersin Kiris baptizes the bull he sees born to a dairy farmer Ersin. It wavers on its feet, sabers on fingers. After three weeks in a box, the veal dealer buys it for a hundred euros. The farmer doesn't get more for a black fur calf with “not very fat buttocks”. Ersin continues to the “calf collection point”, where a thousand calves from all over the Netherlands come together every week to change owners. Anyone with a child in daycare knows how that ends. Baby cows also get diarrhea, respiratory infections, fever. Ersin's calf succumbed to pneumonia.

Most sick calves (89 percent) recover after a 'cure' and move on to the calf farm. There they get dry food — straw and corn. Then their meat turns rosé. Or they drink milk until they are slaughtered; they slob about fourteen litres a day via a diaper. Their flesh remains light in color. That looks young and tender, but is the result of an iron deficiency in their blood. The trick is to feed the calves just iron-rich enough that they don't become lethargic.

The farmer, the cattle dealer and the livestock processor opened the doors of their stable, the livestock market and the factory for the Inspection Service to proudly show what they do. The story of diseases, antibiotics and mortality has now been told by a veterinarian, an animal activist and a scientist. And that, of course, works out badly for the farmer, the master and the butcher.
The blow came and the message was: low-iron calf blood sticks to milk. You heard the gap between city and country crack.
Source: NRC #calves #slaughtering #animalsuffering