"Free-Range" Poultry and Eggs: Not All They're Cracked Up To Be - United Poultry Concerns

"Free-Range" Poultry and Eggs: Not All They're Cracked Up To Be - United Poultry Concerns:

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“The waiter said, ‘All of our chicken is free-range.’ And I said, ‘He doesn’t look very free there on that plate.’” – Joe Bob Briggs, “We Are the Weird”

“Free-Range” Birds Raised for Meat

Birds raised for meat may be sold as “free-range” if they have government certified access to the outdoors. The door may be open for only five minutes and the farm still qualifies as “free-range.” Apart from the “open door,” no other criteria such as environmental quality, number of birds, or space per bird, are included in the term “free-range.” A government official said: “Places I’ve visited may have just a gravel yard with no alfalfa or other vegetation.”

A visitor to Polyface Farm in Virginia wrote: “I toured Polyface on a sweltering day. Chickens were in tiny cages with tin roofs in the beating sun, panting like mad. The cages were located over manure piles the birds were supposed to eat larvae from. Rabbits were kept in factory-farm conditions in suspended, barren wire cages. There was no sign of freedom or compassion for these animals.”