Is it sinful to eat veal?

[Goldenlife]

Can you please tell me if you’ve ever heard that eating veal is sinful? I’d never heard this, but a friend asked me the question.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Veal is meat obtained from a calf raised specifically for its meat that is usually slaughtered before it is three months old. The means used for raising and slaughtering calves for veal are highly controversial, leading many to conclude that supporting such an industry through the purchase and consumption of veal is, at the least, questionable. The practice of manipulating the existence of animals for the sole purpose of obtaining expensive food delicacies is something that even Joseph Ratzinger condemned before becoming Pope Benedict XVI:

That [the welfare of animals] is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they [animals] are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God’s creatures… Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible (source).

While I cannot say it is a “sin” to eat veal, I can say that veal is a luxury and is not a necessity for human existence. Choosing to avoid veal then, out of a concern for proper stewardship for God’s creation, can be a meritorious act.

Recommended reading:

Dominion by Matthew Scully