Calves Confined Alone in “Hutches”

Back in the 1990s, veal was a dirty word because we all knew that tiny babies were taken from their mothers, locked inside cages, and denied proper nourishment to keep them anaemic and their flesh pale. Today, things are much better. We take tiny babies from their mothers and lock them inside hutches, and deny them any movement to keep their flesh tender. Now, that’s what we call progress!

Tiny calves are kept in isolation when they are most vulnerable. They are so desperate for affection and contact that they try to groom one another through the bars that separate them. In the UK, calves must be moved to group housing when they are eight weeks old but even this “kindness” is not guaranteed. A farm investigation found that calves up to six months old were still confined in hutches, even though they had grown too big to access them without causing severe wounds on their backs.² Unbelievably, the government gives grants to farmers, funded by taxpayers, to help them build hutches for calves.³