Table 33.

Background and assumptions of the EKE exercise on the effects of restricted fibre on veal calf welfare

EKE components	Definitions and assumptions
Animal category	Calves reared for white veal meat, aged between 2 weeks and 6 months
Husbandry system	White veal rearing systems
Exposure variable of interest	Kilograms of NDF provided to the calf per day
Welfare consequence	Inability to chew and ruminate
ABM	Percentage of time a calf aged between 2 weeks and 6 months spends ruminating per day. Rumination was defined as the ‘process of returning newly eaten feed to the mouth for further chewing’.
Unexposed population	Defined as a group of calves in a suckler herd, aged between 2 weeks and 6 months, with ad libitum access to pasture and fibre, and continuous and unlimited access to the dam's milk. It was assumed that the calf would ingest increasing amounts of pasture and grass as time went by. It was also assumed that at younger ages, the calf would perform numerous, small bouts of milk intake, and, as the calf grew older, the milk meals would become fewer and larger.
Highly exposed population	Defined as a group of calves reared under a conventional white veal production system, aged between 2 weeks and 6 months, with restricted access to solid feed (total of 270–300 kg dry matter (DM) per rearing cycle). The standard white veal calf's diet is composed of mostly corn with some protein complementation, or of a ‘muesli’ feed made of corn mixture plus fibrous material such as chopped straw. These calves are fed milk twice a day through a bucket or a trough or through an automatic milk dispenser. Calves in these systems are routinely provided with on average ~ 0.19 kg DM NDF per day. It was also assumed that these calves are never weaned and are slaughtered at ~ 22–30 weeks. For the purposes of the EKE it was assumed that calves ingest between 1.1% and 2.4% of body weight of DM per day when aged between 2 weeks and 6 months.