Meat company wants to make more of its veal skins
19/05/2016
Buitelaar launched an initiative at the start of 2014 to promote rose veal from its calf production. It said at the time demand for the meat was there, but that control of the process had to be strict. Calves can be reared from birth to slaughter by farmers, or reared on the farm for the first 12 weeks before transfer to a specific facility that will rear them until slaughter.
The animals must not be older than 14 months and must meet a finishing live weight of 420 kilos. Rose veal production means that animals eat no grass during the production process and even when animals move from farms to fatteners, Buitelaar looks after their diet carefully.
“We are currently producing 550 veal skins per week through this initiative,” the company’s David Doherty has told World Leather. “The skins are a quality product and we have complete traceability. We test all of our suppliers and we have verification of everything. The key thing is that to create a good hide you have to have control of the animal, and that’s what we’ve done. Until now, we’ve just been selling them to tanneries without any special mention, but now we want to make more of the skins and of the whole system we have put in place.”
Mr Doherty said his company’s idea is to market the calf skins to the leather industry under a new name, Buitelaar Gold. “We’ve been looking at ways to add value,” he explained, “and we think this is definitely one way of adding value for us and for the tanners as well.”
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