For so long the preserve of Italian-style menus, many UK chefs are calling for high welfare veal to be more widely available. Veal is often boycotted by the animal welfare conscious because of its negative image of young calves in dimly lit crowded pens. In stark contrast, the reality now is that production methods adopted by organic dairy farmers mean the animals have plenty of space and light. They are outside in warmer months, enjoy a varied diet and very often the care of a foster cow.

With a life span of six months, organic calves live twice as long as even the slowest growing chicken, share the same life span as a good organic pig and live longer than many organic lambs.

Philip Lymbery, Chief Executive of Compassion in World Farming, says “we applaud this initiative for providing better lives for calves through higher welfare rearing systems and thereby helping to save them from the inhumane live export trade.”

The Good Veal Guide includes mouth-watering recipes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Sophie Grigson, together with Barny Haughton who has been championing sustainable food production for over 18 years and opens his new restaurant and cookery school, Bordeaux Quay, on Bristol’s Harbourside this September.

“Organic veal is a meat with a delicate, but sweet flavour,” says Barny Haughton. “It is tender in texture, pink in colour and it is also wonderfully versatile; from saltimbocca - thin slices, a few seconds in the frying pan with butter and lemon - to osso buco - shanks, slowly braised with tomatoes and white wine - to a beautiful golden veal and ham pie. It is for sound gastronomic reasons that veal is at the heart of traditional European cooking,” he continues.

The first humane organic veal system was pioneered ten years ago by Helen Browning, organic farmer who runs Eastbrook Farm in Wiltshire. Also Food and Farming Director of the Soil Association she says that consumers can play a key role in reversing what can be an uncertain future for many calves. “The calf’s mother will go back into the organic dairy herd producing the pints, the yoghurts and the cheeses that millions of us enjoy every day,” she says. “But what of the calf? The typical male dairy calf will never turn itself into a great beef animal, but good farming will produce superb meat from these livestock at a younger age.

This veal should not be tarred with the same brush as the imported white slab of protein too often served in the UK.”

Veal will enjoy a star turn at both the Organic Food Awards and the Organic Food Festival this week. On 1st September the great and the good from the organic sector will sit down to a veal lunch at Bordeaux Quay. At Europe’s largest organic food festival, in Bristol on 2nd and 3rd September, Barny Haughton and Bordeaux Quay will be hosting veal cookery demonstrations by chefs from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage, Raymond Blanc’s kitchen at the Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons and Sophie Grigson.

The Good Veal Guide can be obtained by visiting www.goodveal.com