Veal-peddling Pelosi embraces both hypocrisy and suffering for the sake of profit

San Rafael, Calif. (November 29, 2012) – In Defense of Animals (IDA) has sent a letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, blasting her contradictory public proclamation as a “Green” and “Sustainable Living” supporter, while allowing veal to be served at four restaurants in which she is an investor.

Pelosi invests in the Moana Restaurant Group that serves veal in four restaurants: Piatti in Mill Valley and La Jolla, California, Piatti in Denver, Colorado, and The Quarry in San Antonio, Texas. Pelosi has not yet responded to the letter, which is available to media upon request.

IDA is urging Representative Pelosi to align her public persona with her personal ventures by adopting a No Veal Policy at all of her restaurants. If Pelosi does not immediately adopt a No Veal Policy, IDA will organize protests at all of her restaurants that serve veal.

“If Nancy Pelosi is comfortable with serving veal at her restaurants, she should display some integrity and transparency by opening these ‘Green’ veal operations to the public and personally showing everyone the “environmental” way to confine and kill a baby calf,” said Joe Haptas, IDA’s Executive Director.

Veal calves are forcibly removed from their mothers, cruelly denying them their strongest and most basic instinct to bond, and replacing it with isolation, one of the worst traumas any newborn could face. Their lives are spent in cold, dark, filthy environments chained by the neck in tiny pens, or in stalls barely wider than their frail bodies. They are forced to urinate and defecate where they sleep because they are purposely denied the ability to move in any direction for weeks on end. They are deprived of sunlight and water. They can’t even lie down to sleep comfortably. Such deprivations are allegedly required to keep the meat “tender”.

Undercover investigations of veal slaughterhouses reveal terrified screaming calves being kicked, slapped, and repeatedly electric-prodded so they will stand up to get slaughtered. These investigations also reveal routine violations of the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which requires that animals be rendered insensible to pain before they are slaughtered. Instead, fully conscious calves have their throats slit, while others scream as their legs are being cut off.

“There is absolutely nothing ‘Green’ or ‘Sustainable’ about the veal industry,” said IDA’s Haptas. “Nancy Pelosi should be ashamed of herself, and should show some real leadership. Veal is not ‘Green,’
it’s bloody wrong.”

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that more than 63,000 veal calves are slaughtered each month, with 71,600 calves killed last month alone.

Contact: Christy Griffin, 757-305-7019, Christy@idausa.org