It is possible to eat a healthy diet without meat - it is called being a vegetarian. It means that you eat only food that is grown, not from animals or fish.

Most of the meat we eat today is from animals on farms. When a farmer wants to earn money from his animals, he sends them to the abattoir or meat works, where the animals are killed, and cut into the meat that you buy at the butcher or the supermarket.

There are rules about how the animals are treated, but they must be pretty scared when they go into a big noisy factory that smells of blood and fear.

Some kinds of meat are produced in a very cruel way. A special kind of meat is tender veal, and to make it tender, male calves used for veal are taken from their mothers one or two days after birth. They are chained inside tiny crates barely larger than their bodies and are usually kept in darkness, except to be fed two or three times a day for 20 minutes.

During their brief lives, they never see the sun or touch the earth. They never see or taste the grass. The calves cannot turn around in their crate - this is to stop them getting muscles, and keep the meat tender. After 14 weeks living like this, they are slaughtered.