The Truth Behind Cage-Free and Free-Range

great kids in the Hall. That's right. I can just sit here and quote Kids in the Hall one liners all day. I love those guys. So that's not what we're here to do, though, Chuck, settle down, settle down. We're going away from the kids in the Hall. Yes, and since you mentioned that, Uh, what we're also not here to do is shame anybody or make anyone feel bad, or to tell anyone how to live their life and eat their breakfast. But we're here to arm you with

information on this one about uh. And I'm not surprised you picked this one, but I just thought, since I

had somewhat scarring experience a commercial chicken farming industry. For those of you listening that don't know this, one of my last real person jobs before this job many years ago, as I worked for a software company that designed software for commercial chicken uh operations to better track how they lay eggs and how they gain weight and how you're feeding them and kind of everything how they're killed uh. And I hated that job. It was sold killing and

I never understood it. I never invested in it, and as far as understanding the software, and I was in tech support, and so I was terrible at it. But my friends ran the company and eventually they fired me because I was so bad at it. And that's the best thing that ever happened to me, because that led directly to getting this job. It's like Garth Brooks said,

some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. All Right, you know your prayer to be good at your chicken killing software job was unanswered and instead an even better prayer that you didn't even know you had was answered. Yeah. I didn't have that prayer. I didn't want to be

good at that job. But yeah, so this is like all this is probably pretty well known to you because this this is We've been doing this kind of stuff to chickens for a good seventy years by now, right, Yeah, and you know the you know, we're going to talk some about factory farming. Finally. I don't think we've dodged it, but people have, you know, long said hey, guys, can you get into this? And you know we're not touching cattle or swine. We're just starting dipping our toe into

it with poultry, dipping our beaks, dipping our beaks untrimmed beaks. Yeah, I can peck you till the cows come home, which is something that happens on the farm. That's right. So let's enough dancing around, chuck Um. We're talking about today, not not necessarily factory farming all the like you said, we have to talk about We're gonna talk about those labels that you see on your eggs or on your chicken, usually cage free or UM free range or something along

those lines, and whether it means anything. But one of the great successes of the last probably five six, maybe even ten years or longer Um came very quietly out of the effective altruism community. Chuck Yeah, A group of effective altruists said, you know, we're always looking to maximize our charitable contributions. There's a lot of chickens out there

that are not being treated very well. Supposedly, there's seven point six billion egg laying hands alone worldwide at any given time, almost eight billion, So if you could improve the lives of them even by a little bit, you would really be reducing a massive amount of suffering. So they got three million dollars together, and like um Laser, focused it on advocacy, lobbying, getting legislation put through, and

then most of all pressuring really really big companies. They went after some whales um to to commit to going on cage free eggs within a very short period of time, sometimes four sometimes twenty thirty UM but all of these huge companies, everybody from dan Owe to Burger King to McDonald's to Whole Foods not surprisingly but also like Dollar General, all of them have signed a pledge that says, all of the eggs that our customers buy, whether it's imprepared

food or eggs you buy in the store, are going to be one cage free eggs within the next few years. And they did it with like three million dollars and and a lot of elbow grease. I think all those companies probably said, alright, alright, if they're cheese, if they're cage free, eggs out there, will use them stops. That's what the burger king said. Yeah, the guy that he said it with his mind, yeah, because his mouth doesn't move. But it was a big deal. I mean, the fact

that they got that, that that that's happening. It's a big deal. And one it's one of those things where, um, if you scratch beneath the surface, it's not an intended punt, but if you scratch beneath the surface, and a lot of these terms and phrases that the U. S d A likes to bandy about, things like cage free and things like free range and stuff like that, it's often

really disappointing. But that's one of the things about cage free is that it is an actual, substantial will increase in the welfare and quality of life for egg laying chickens in the in the United States. It's a big, big deal. And it's not that they're they're they're in these amazing conditions all of a sudden with cage free. It's that they're in such poor conditions otherwise that this is a huge improvement for them. Yeah, and I think you know a lot of people agree. Even cage free

isn't all it's cracked up to be. Um, But there a lot of like chicken based idioms that we use. There's suddenly coming to the Uh. When I worked with that company, they made everybody at one point, even if you didn't do like project management where you had to go to the farms, they made us all go to the farms and tech support at one point. And I know I've told the story before, but it was a pretty awful experience. Uh. And it smells really really bad.

It smells so bad that me and my one friend that I worked with, Barry Um, were like, did the sort of the silence to the Lamb's trick with dabbing some uh like menthal on our upper lip under our nostrils, just so we could walk through these things. Uh. And you know that I think they thought it would benefit as just sort of just see boots on the ground.

What happened. I was like, it's I appreciate the peel trip, but it did not benefit me in any way except hearing things like oh man, cage or free range just means there's a door open, they don't even use it. And I heard this back then. I was like, oh my gosh, is that true. And as it turns out, as we'll see, if that's kind of true. Yeah, And we shouldn't confuse free range with cage free. There are two different things. We'll describe them both. But yeah, yeah,

so cage free is a huge improvement. Free range is as bad as you'd expect it to be, basic because it's coming from the U. S t A. Yeah, So I guess let's talk about um let's briefly, and big thanks to Dave Ruse for helping us out with this one. But Dave starts out with a little bit of history, and I think that's a good place to start because you don't have to look very far. Are back in this country. Uh, it seems like a long time ago, but the nineteen forties isn't that long ago in the

in the lifespan of America. And back then they were still like feeding America their eggs or its eggs. I don't even know what America is um with backyard chickens basically, um they were big farms, of course, but they weren't like these big, massive battery cages that we see today. They were hens living outdoors, generally on farms, laid about a hundred eggs a year. Uh. And then after a few years when they quit laying eggs, then they would be used for meat. They'd turn into Sunday dinner they

would uh. And these days, starting in like the fifties, things became a little more industrialized and mechanized, and that's when battery cages came into play. Which is the wire cage that you might like. If you have friends that have backyard chickens, you probably built them a large coupe and within that coup some battery ca just but if you're a backyard chicken person, you probably have battery cages

that are very large for two or three for chickens. Yeah, these are not the battery cages that they're raised in. After farming became industrialized in the fifties, like these things are usually have I've seen anywhere between three and seven chickens in there, um and usually each one has about the amount of space about a little lower or a little smaller than the size of a standard piece of paper. And for the the teenage listeners out there, smaller than

the size about the size of an iPad. Yeah, that's a chicken. A chicken. They can't move around, they can't flap their wings, they can't do a lot of stuff that we'll find out is a is a big problem in a minute. Um they're meant to be kept basically in one place, and because this stuff has all been industrialized, their whole job and everything about their life is to just sit there and lay egg after or egg after egg.

So they're kept in these battery cages. The battery cages are kept off the ground, which is good because it means that they're away from parasites and poop borne diseases. And the eggs are yeah, they when they poop, they it falls onto a conveyor belt that carries the poop away, so it's a little more sanitary. When they lay an egg, the bottom of the cage is slanted downward, so it rolls downward onto a different conveyor belt thankfully, that whisks

the egg away. So the whole thing is really automated. And because these cages are are so um uh uniform, they can be stacked. It's modular, so you can go upward with chickens as well as outward too. You can really raise a lot of chickens in these battery cages, which is good if you're a farmer, not really good if you're a chicken though. Yes, and these chickens. You know, I said that the backyard chickens of your uh laid about a hundred eggs a year. Today's chickens lay closer

to three hundred eggs a year. Because they are bread is scifically to do so, and just the way beyond being bred to do so, Like you said, they're set up as such that it's just uh, you know, they have made it a very efficient operation as far as how much they can extract from each hen. Yeah, that was a real quick check. That was a big part

of the industrialization of farming. Two is is breeding practices to where we started selectively breeding types of chickens that either laid a perfectly nice brown egg or um ones that gained weight in certain places that we wanted them to. Like. Genetics has been a huge part of that as well. Yeah, we're really lucky because are really really good friends. Justin and Melissa. I've known Justin since college, you know, Justin he uh, they have chickens. They have these four beautiful

ladies in their backyard. Uh. And they have a big, wonderful coupe but anytime they're outside uh and can safeguard them from hawks by keeping an eye on them. Those those ladies are running around the yard with their dogs. They've somehow managed to train these dogs to kind of give them their space. Uh. And it's great. And you know, they give us eggs and we spend money in their wine shop and it's a great symbiotic relationship that is

really great. Yeah, yeah, it's a good. Uh. We we save our cartons and stuff when we do have to buy eggs, so they have cartons to give out to their friends because these ladies are laying a lot of eggs. Lightly. So Justin has a chickens in a wine shop. Now he's living the life. Oh man, it's the American dream realized by my British import friend. Look good. So he's doing it what you could call the right way, I think, um, which is to say they're very necessarily the profit maximizing way.

But the chickens are, you would guess, much happier than the ones that are in these battery cages. And one of the reasons why we would say the chickens are not so happy in the battery cages because like again, they can't move. If you put a chicken on a piece of paper, it's going to take up most of that piece of paper or iPad, right, So when you visualize that, you suddenly get like, this is this is for the whole for its whole life, usually somewhere around

seventy weeks. This is how it spends almost all of that time in this little cage, just laying eggs, laying eggs to an unnatural at an unnatural pace. And because it's kind of stuck in this this one small place, there's a lot of things that it can't do that people who have studied chickens say, chickens need to do this or else they're going to go insane and have a really horrific life. Um, and that is kind of what the basis of creating like cage free setups or

like genuine free range setups is. It comes from giving chickens a better life while during those seventy or so weeks that they're alive. Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy for somebody maybe who doesn't think about it much to think of a laying hen as just this sort of organic egg machine, like a living egg machine. Not organic in the sense that it's you know, sort of hard organic, but a living machine that just pumps out these eggs that we love to eat for breakfast or

on top of a hamburger or you know, a good meal. Oh, I don't know about that, but that's not the case. Like, these birds have personalities and they have behaviors that they want to do and that they normally do, like, uh, it's just a handful of them they love. And you know, you can see this when I go over to Justin

and Melissa's house when they're out doing their thing. They're preening and they're cleaning their feathers and they're flapping, ruffling their feathers around and flapping around, and they take a little dust bass, which means they roll around on the ground, and uh, they're absorbing oil for their feathers, and they're getting rid of their dead skin and their shedding feathers that they don't need, and little feather mites, and they

love to nest. And then here's the big one is And I've seen it happen and I've tried to guard my eyes because I know what's going on. They don't like a lot of attention when they're laying these eggs. It's a they're giving birth. It's a private matter to them, you know, giving birth in the figurative sense. But it's uh, it's like they're doing their business. They don't want a lot of attention. They'd like to do this instinctively in private, and they're not able to do that there. It's called

the laying act and it's on full display. And they can get so upset about having to do this without any privacy in battery cages, not can they do. They get so upset they peck at other hens and they fight each other. And that's why they end up clipping their beaks because the other hens are getting injured from being henpecked because they're stressed out from living on an iPad. Yeah.

Dr con Conrad Lorenz Or Lawrence Um, who starred in our Animal Imprinting episode, I think he's popped up elsewhere. He had a quote he said, the worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act. The person who knows something about animals. It is truly heartrending to watch how a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her fellow cage mates to search their in vain for cover because they don't get what's going on too. It's it is,

it's heartbreaking. Yeah, So, like that is an enormous thing. Like not only are we forcing them to have more eggs every year, we're forcing them to do it against their instinct basically every day, and they really suffer tremendous amount of distress for that. And then one of the other ones, one of the other behaviors that's really really big is roaming, their freedom to roam. Chickens are very

social animals. They like to hang out, they like to mess with each other, like to pren one another, not to supreme themselves, um, but they also need space to get away from one another there and when they can't do that, that's when things like hen pecking to uh to an injurious degree, or cannibalism we're all sorts of um. Terrible zookosis can happen when chickens are stuck together in a very small area for their entire lives, and that is the basis of battery cages. And you said, it's like,

like it makes sense from a mechanized industrial standpoint. But back in the day when when when they figured this out. These are the same people who resisted putting seatbelts and cars and got us into Vietnam, you know what I mean? Like, these aren't exactly the most moralistic generation that we've ever produced. They were very sensible and like rational minded and didn't take a great deal of humanity into consideration when it

came to profit maximization. Yes, this is a segment we like to call Gen X speaks to millennials and Gen Z about boomers. That's right, you got that straight. But it's true. They also you know, alter their UH diet and lighting to UH to maximize their output. They don't move around, so they're obviously you know what's gonna happen when an animal is just sort of stuck in the small,

tiny thing, They're gonna have no muscle. They have muscle loss because they can't move around and do their thing, and they basically become what I described, which is these living egg laying machines, which is exactly how the industrial egg complex, if that's a term wants it. But things are changing a little bit, and we're gonna walk you through some of you know, a lot of these are marketing terms, but some of them are legitimate um terms

that the USDA allows them to use. Uh, in addition to these great pictures that you see on your egg cartons of chickens, like, you know, smiling under the sunshine on a rolling pastoral scene. Uh, they're allowed to do stuff like that, but the words that they use are regulated to an extent. And if you really, really really want to do your due diligence, though, you've got to know what all this stuff means and then even do a little more investigation. Yeah, typical U. S d A

type stuff. But let's take a break and then we'll get into cage free. How about that, Let's get out of the cage. If you want to know, then you're

in luck. Just chuck. Okay, So we're talking cage free, and I think I already let the cat out of the bag, although hopefully not in the chicken cooper um that cage free actually does have some meaning like actually, if you if you look at it compared to the battery cage operations of your or actually I shouldn't say, of yours are still most chickens in the United States, at least they're still in battery cages. I think something like se which amounts to two and thirty million hens

are currently in battery cages. Um, so it's still going on, still happening. But if you if you compare the battery cage to the cage free operation, it is a substantial difference, for sure. Yeah, Like the more we describe this stuff, there are levels of getting better, for sure. Uh in cage free is better. Uh, it is greater than it means. And this is a direct quote from the U. S d A means the eggs must be produced by hens housed in a way that allows for not only unlimited

access to food and water. And you might think, well, duh, but they used to like keep food from hens. Uh, so different things would happen with their production and they're like, you can't do that at all anymore, and then the rest of it goes. But unlike eggs from caged hens also provides them freedom to roam during the laying cycle.

That's huge. But here's the deal is, they are there aren't any guidelines about what that access to outdoors means uh, it doesn't say how much space there needs to be, And so basically what you're still seeing is a big, long barn with a bunch of laying hens packed inside there.

They're just not in those wire cages. No, they have now instead of about an eight by eight square of space available to them like they do in the battery cages, typically a hand in a free or cage free situation has about ten and a half inch by eleven inch space available to them per bird, And it's not like it's designated. That's what they can move around. At least

they can move around these giant, giant barns. The problem is that there's tens of thousands of hens also in these barns, and they just don't have that much room to move. If they had a ton of willpower and they decided they were going to go to point B, they could conceivably make their way there. But it's not going to be easy and it's not like they're just roaming around and they have a bunch of free space

to move around in or do much in. Again, compared to the battery cages, where they had no chance of moving away from their little cage, it is a huge improvement. But then when you see a picture of what a cage free barn looks like, it's it gets a little depressing again. Yeah, and you know some of these egg producers are not the hens, but the operations. Obviously there's

only one egg producer in the scenario. Um. They do have some perches that are built up, and they do have some nesting areas so they can hop up there. They can stretch their wings, but they're not required to. That's not part of the U s d A requirement. If you want to look for requirements that you could look for a label from the United Egg Producers. They have a different certification guideline for cage free that's a little more um, I guess open than the U s

d A s are restrictive. I guess if you're a farmer. Uh. They must allow hens to exhibit natural behaviors that we talked about and include enrichments such as scratch areas, purchase, and nests, so they have to have those, and then they must have access to litter. And litter is just like the stuff on the ground that they like to roll around in. It's not like beer, canson, old batteries

and stuff nothing crying ironized cody kind of. Uh. They must have protection from predators and be able to move through a barn in a manner that promote that promotes bird welfare. So that's a little hazy, but that generally means not as crowded. But I don't think that that even specifies what that means. No, And and that is

much better than the U. S d A standards. And the United Egg Producers are an industry industry group of like agg operators, Like I think there's maybe a hundred and fifty in the in the United States, which is way less than there used to be almost all the eggs, right, yes, yeah, and we explored a lot of them too. Um. Surprisingly Uh so it's a it's a car, it's a cartel,

a lot like a salabbying group basically for the egg producers. Um. And you know, at at the risk of sounding like suspicious of them, like I would guess that they created these standards to get ahead of this problem that was growing all of a sudden and costing them money. So by doing better than the U. S c A, you know, that's great. Like their hens are are genuinely like um, um, what's the word, what's the opposite of suffering benefiting from that?

But it makes me suspect and actually I know from research it can be much better than that, right. And a big one is density. It's a it's a huge part of it. It's density. How like there should be much greater limits on how many hens you can have per barn. And then also another one is even under these um these better more stricter standards for hand welfare, their their lives are very much artificially controlled still because they're kept in this barn. They're still in a barn.

They don't go outside to be cage free. You you still don't go outside if your hand. You spend your entire life in one single barn until you stop producing enough eggs fast enough, and then they turn you into pet food. That's right, Uh, sometimes feeding yourself back to your fellow chickens. Uh. I looked a little bit into what chicken feed is mainly made of. And because I remember at the time when I took this tour, someone said something about, you know, there's chicken parts in the

chicken feed. Uh. This was someone telling me this. I didn't find that in my research, but there has been a movement away from things like fish meal because fish meal is obviously the oceans are being depleted too, to using fishes to feed chickens isn't a great idea. And I think just a few years ago, um, there was final approval to use uh and it sounds gross, but like fly larva, and you might think, like that's good.

That is good because that's what chickens would eat if they were just roaming the countryside, they would eat things like that. Yeah, so they're starting to be fed things they normally would would eat otherwise, which is good that their their food is still very much controlled and portioned and everything, but they, um, they're starting to be fed things that more resemble their diet was before it was just whatever was cheapest and most abundant that you could

feed a chicken like soy and fish. That's yeah, that's not natural. And you, as the person eating the egg, should be like, I don't want to egg from a chicken that's been eating fish. It's whole life. Chickens don't eat fish. This egg probably tastes way different than it should. And that's another thing too. There's a lot of health benefits that have been documented in eggs that come from well treated chickens. It seems to be that the you

treat a chicken, the healthier the egg it produces. Is you can just get a and you know, if you don't have a friend that has a back air chicken, there's probably some local farmers market where some fish fan will sell you their eggs. Uh. And you you need only look at them from the outside at first, to what they look like in the pan, to what they taste like. It is a stark difference. It just is U Yeah, totally. You eat one and you can take

on like five cops. Yeah, there's that nutrient. These cage free chickens, whether they're United Egg Producer Standard or just usd A standard, they still have their beaks trimmed when they're ten days old. They're still forced molted. Molten is a natural process, but they do something called force molting when uh and this is where they used to take away their feed entirely to force molting. Now they just

withhold some feed to force the molting. It's when they shed those feathers and molts and that extends there their layer life by you know, it's pretty substantial. It can be like forty weeks so that again they're just they're ringing every last egg out of those chickens, k tree

or not. I saw that the forced molting is not actually in and of itself harmful, and that it might actually be beneficial for the chickens because they live their life indoors, and one of the ways that they do that is through adjusting the length of the light, the artificial light. But the problem is natural their withholding. No, it's not naturally happening, but it's not going to naturally happen during their lifetime anyway, And it actually is good

for them to go through a mold. But they wouldn't without this induced or forced molting because they aren't They aren't subjected to um natural light. They don't get natural light. It's all artificial. They spend their entire lives basically indoors, almost entirely cut off from natural light, if not entirely cut off from it. See I thought hens malt by being a hen. No. No, I think they take their cues from um a shorter duration of days, and then

they stop eating quite as much. Then they go through the molting process, stop laying eggs uh as frequently, and then that happens. I'm saying, yes, it does, but it's cued by changes in natural light. And if they're not exposed to natural light, they're not going to undergo the mold, right unless you Yeah, but like justin Melissa's eggs malt because they like it can be the shorter day of the natural light cycle of a year, right right, Yeah,

And that's a natural thing. I'm just saying, like they can induce it through artificial light changes an artificial light, and it's not necessarily bad that they induce it artificially. It's probably better than just not doing it at all. Right, Okay, I got you. Okay, I thought you're saying they molt normally. No, no, no, I would never say something like that. Uh, now we can move on. Those are hens that lay eggs. Now we can move on to hens that are raised for meat.

They're called broilers, uh in the industry, and um, it's kind of the same deal of American broilers. Chickens never see light in this country. Uh. They are in those from the moment they're born as a little chickie chicks. They are in a barn, and they live about six weeks and they are they are pumped up as fast as they can be pumped up to get the biggest breast meat possible. UM. I think there was, Dave, this

is pretty startling. UM day found a calculation that if you if you sort of transferred their growth rate to like what a human baby would look like, Uh, it would be a three forty nine pound baby by their second birthday, like baby huey. Yeah, that's maybe we are right. Yeah. So the the way that they did this is through basically selective breeding UM, selecting chickens that UM grow in

their breast area. But they've basically surpassed any any point where you would normally stop because it's now very harmful for the chicken. These chickens that we eat, the broiler chickens UM not necessarily a whole chicken. It can also be like you know, um, like drumsticks or breasts or thighs or whatever, all that comes from a broiler chicken.

Any chicken you eat is a broiler chicken. UM. So these broiler chickens are are usually selected for their breasts, and their breasts are so heavy that they can't really walk because their legs aren't developing the way that they should.

But then In addition to that, their legs can't develop the way they should because the breast is so heavy, so they end up with metabolic diseases, they end up with muscle atrophy, and they don't do much of anything except eat and rest because that's basically all they have the energy to do. Six weeks is their lifespan. Yeah, they just want to reiterate that. So over the six weeks, Yeah, they go from like chicks to slaughtered adults in six weeks,

So they're growing that fast. But they're also growing way bigger than any normal chicken would write, any normal breed. So during that six weeks um, they're stuck in this litter. If they're in a situation where they have litter available to them and they're just pooping and peeing in this litter, and they're not getting up enough to not get like blisters from the ammonia in the litter, it's a it's a problem in and of itself, Like that's how basically

obese these these chickens are. That they cannot move much at all, and they end up getting sores from exposure to all the yearine they're they're sitting in. Yeah, this was the hardest part of that tour for me in the one where my buddy Barry and I actually left the building after And I'll go ahead, and we probably should have issued a trigger warning period hopefully the titled episode would scare off any like vegans who really didn't don't even want to hear about this, but trigger warning

right here. Uh, one of the you know, and this is what they do when one of the broilers or any of the chickens are are injured or you know, uh winged in some way that isn't uh, I don't know. I'm not gonna put I'm not gonna label what exactly is wrong with the chicken when they pick it up by the neck and sling it in a little circle real quick to snap their neck and then throw it back on the ground. But that's exactly what happened in front of us when we saw a chicken that apparently

wasn't doing well. And the guy is literally in mid conversation and I know this is the job that they do, and I don't expect him to hold a funeral. But um, that's when Barry and I stepped out and we're like, uh, we're gonna be out here for the rest of the tour, I can imagine, And yeah, I had five cigarettes at

the same time. So there's this um this right, or from the New Yorker named Michael Spencer who went to a poultry farm and he wrote that, um, there must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn't move, they didn't cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens living in nearly total darkness. And they would spend every minute of their

six week lives that way. It's pretty sobering. And those are the brothers, those are the ones we eat, right, So um, again, they're bread to to grow this way, and it's totally unnatural. Chickens don't normally get like that. And when they do interact with people, which is not obviously a requirement for a chicken to have a good life, but it's for what you just said. It's to to harvest or kill a sick or just a sick chicken, or get the carcass of a dead chicken out of there.

And if you want to see just how little humans, how little of a role humans have in chicken farming today, there's a video that Day found. It's actually like a trade video that I think Ink is kind of like to sell all of these different machines. It's called Inside the Million Dollar Chicken Farm, Amazing Modern Chicks, Poultry Farming check Technology. It's on YouTube and it's like sixteen minutes long.

I didn't watch it with the volume, so I don't know if there's narration, but if you watch it on mute, it's just it's mesmerizing. And it's also like, I really hope humans don't end up like this in the next like hundred two hundred years, you know, like it's really really weird and unsettling, but then also at the same time deeply fascinating. Yeah. So the answer then would be free range. That is seemingly the solution. So what does

that mean. We talked about cage free and what that means. Uh. For the U s d A, any egg or poultry product that can be classified as free range means the housing for the birds must provide continuous free access to the outside through their normal growing cycle. Uh. And again, this is sort of like that story when the guy said it just means there's a door. They don't go out there because their food and water is in here U S D A D A doesn't say, um, how big this door has to be, where it has to

be placed. They don't say they don't require them to go outside, like they don't shuttle them outside every day for some sunlight like you would like in a prison yard or something like that. All that matters is that they have continuous access. That door stays accessible and open. And uh, so you've got your big barn again, you've got your small door, and if they want to go outside,

they can. But then even if they do go outside, it doesn't say like and you've got to have this much area for this many chickens to roam around if they want to. It can be anything. It can be a pretty small little area and it still qualifies as outside. So so those huge dark barns with artificial light filled with tens of thousands of chickens, if you popped a hole the size of a bread plate into the wall of that barn, you could call your operation a free

range chicken operation. Now that's it to be fair. But uh, technically you're right, yeah, And it's like, yes, it is technical that I'm right, But from from the research and into just how um, how much of a finger the U. S d A has on what constitutes free range and

who meets those requirements. It's entirely possible that somebody's just cut a little hole inside of the barn and now is is saying free range and could argue that if an inspector did come out and argued it with them, they would probably the the egg producer would probably win that argument in court, right. I mean, the doors I saw were bigger, and chickens could easily fit, like more

than one chicken, like they were sizeable. But again, the whole point is their food and water is inside, and so chickens are generally an especially when they're they're still pretty crowded in there. They're still gonna stay where their food and water is. Generally, it's not like they're saying, hey, we're gonna put the water out. We're gonna have outdoor class today. Guys, we're gonna put the water in the food outside. That will really encourage you to go outside.

They don't care if they go outside or not. So um, we should say the EU has much better standards for what constitutes free range. They've been working at free range and cage free stuff since like ninety nine and have really made some big gains since then. Um. But then even in the United States, Chuck, there's plenty of people like Justin Um who are saying, like, no, I actually want my chickens to be free range, like you would think free range actually is. And so there's there's UM.

There's another kind of designation called pasture raised, which people tend to use when they're to kind of separate themselves from free range, because I think enough people have picked up on the fact that free range is kind of meaningless, so pasturage seems to be um more more legitimate, or most people who do legitimately raise chickens outdoors would call them pasture raised. So they're like wheeling them around from

place to place. They have an enclosure that they can go to and inclement weather, but for the most most of their lives, they're spending their time outdoors, UM doing what chickens do given plenty of space for being chickens, and that's typically pasture raised. Unfortunately, as far as the us d IS can the U s d A is concerned, pasture raised is the same thing as free range. So again, if you have a shed that has all these chickens

and you cut a hole on the side. You can now call that pastur raise too if you want, Yeah, you can't. And and if you're saying, well, if you're saying that some places use pastor raged raised or raged, uh would be quite a party. It's like am trax is loosing your pasture? Uh? If you're saying that, um, some farmers are doing it right, smaller operations And when they say past your rays, they mean it. But technically the U S d A D A doesn't make a distinction.

What am I to do? That's where you have to, like do your homework. You can't just make if you want to you if you, if you, if it matters to you, you gotta look up this farm and see what they're doing. And a lot of times see smaller farms will say, hey, come on out if you care, and we'll show you our operation because we're proud of it. Like you can. Uh. They generally have websites where you

can and it's all there. You know. I think the U S d A even demands, not demands, but requires a H. I demand a U r L. They take their shoe off and bang it on the death. They require a u r L where you can look this stuff up if you want to. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the U s d is all over that, which is good because I mean, we've got third party certification who

you know who could be illegitimate. But I think that like the industry would police third party certifiers because they don't want to like give away their money unnecessarily because getting um, getting things like pasture raised or um free range like these are these are like it's not required. You can opt to have it done to be certified like that, but you're gonna pay for it. So if we had like phony you know, certifiers running around, I guess yeah, the big producers will probably co opted and

use it to their gain. But luckily there are some really legitimate third party certifiers. And the one that seems to have bubbled to the top as far as I can tell, is called Humane Farm Animal Care, A fact I think is the way that you say the the abbreviation. Yeah, I think that's a good uh cliffhanger. Okay, Yeah, and let's take our final break and we'll talk about them and uh and generally, how the U s d A determines if it qualifies as K free or free range

to begin with. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just chuck all right. So you mentioned a couple of important things before the break. One is that, um, if you want these certifications, uh, it is an uh like egg grating stuff like that you see like great A eggs. It is a voluntary thing you have to pay for. Uh, so you can you know, you do it so you can put it on your label so you can charge more obviously, Uh. And you know, maybe you care about delivering a higher quality egg. Who knows.

But uh, the U s d d A doesn't. Um Like if it's certified organic, they're not out there doing that certification. That is completely done by U s d A approved certification bodies, and those seem to be a little more feet on the ground as far as actually going to farms and looking at them. Uh, the U s d A does not require and and they can't there are too many, you know that. I don't think they even had the staffing to do that if they wanted to to go out and actually photograph arms and

check it out. If you want that descriptor and label, you have to send in a detailed written description explaining how it meets the standards along with an affidavit that's signed that it's not false misleading. But that's kind of it. Like that's the all the proof they need. That's so that's for free range. Cage free they take away more seriously, that's where they do have inspectors go out and check so like if it says cage free has been verified

that this this meets those cage free standards. So that's that's a good thing. That's another reason why cage free is a big step up. But yeah, free ranges you say, um, yes, my operation is free range under u s d A standards. No, I'm not lying, and the USDA d A says, good enough, you're you can put free range on your labels. Now,

yeah they did. Uh. I think they found a study from that Animal Welfare Institute that examined records from the f s I S and they found that only one producer out of a hundred actually submitted photos of the

barn showing the access. Like I think eighty three out of the hundred, uh provided evidence, Uh, I guess not photographic evidence, but um affidavits and third party kind of certifications, and then seventeen of them just had zero substantial substantiation at all, and that they dug in a little bit and found in forty four cases they had no detailed written description at all, which is supposedly what's required, But they still got approval from the U. S t A

did label their stuff is free range. Yeah, so I don't want to say the words rubber stamp, but it seems like it might be that way for sure. And again, just buy or beware. Free range is synonymous as far as the U. S. D A is concerned with free roaming, pasture fed, pasture grown, pasture raised, and meadow raised. And again,

I just want to drive this home. It means that there's a hole in the side of this giant barn filled with tens of thousands of chickens who may or may not be going in or out of that hole on any day or if ever, during their entire lives. And on the other side of that it might just be a concrete pad, is what they're They could be free ranging on like, that's it as far as the USDA is concerned. So we have a long way to

go with free range. Um. In particular because chuck like you me and basically anyone listening to this podcast has a totally different conception of what free range means, right. And there was a survey that was done again by the Animal Welfare Institute. They did it in two thousand and fifteen, and they went out to people, just everyday people and said, hey, what do you what do you think free range? Should, shouldn't should um entail? And they

came back with some pretty interesting stuff. Yeah. They you know, as would expect, people thought that free range should mean that there's enough space outside for every bird to be out during the day, uh, during daylight hours that they want to be in. Consumers said they thought the outdoor area should be at least partially covered by grass. Like the expectation from consumers is, well, you put a picture on your carton of a hen rolling around, uh this

beautiful pastoral scene. So that's kind of what I expect. Or am I just being hoodwinked? And the answer is you're being hoodwinked. Well, to be fair, these are the same people that believe that those barbecue signs where a pig is actually cooking the barbecue, they think that's going on as well. So we got to really kind of keep this in I never understood that one those are so disturbing. It. This is my brother Lou. We we

were eating him. Later we had a falling out. Uh um. So, like I said, if you're if is all of this is just frustrating and confusing, all you have to do is do a little legwork, um or you know, obviously go to those local farmers markets because that's where that's where you're really getting into good stuff and talk to them. I guarantee you that fish fan is gonna invite you out to their farm to check out what's going on. Yeah, but you might walk away with more than eggs. You

know what I'm saying. That's right, it would be a nice trip. So it literally am so Um if you do want to figure out like where to get good eggs or what eggs you can trust and because you it's because you don't trust a fish fan. Um. There are organizations that say, like, let's not get fish fans involved in this at all, let's keep them at bay, and everyone says, yes, agreed, agreed, How can we move forward without the fish? Keep them on the couch where

they belong. So again, the humane farm animal care fact Um, they they from what I can tell, at least in the United States, they definitely are yet and they've come up with some definitions um for their certified humane label. So that's the one that certified humane on a like

a poultry or some sort of food product. It actually has met some really good standards and they were basically like the U s d a's definition of free range and pasture raised are so terrible, We're just going to create our own definitions, and they did so, they created their own standards, and to to be certified humane free range or certified humane pasture raised, they the producers have

to meet those standards and they're good ones. Yeah, they're really good, or you know, comparatively speaking, at least for free range, the hens must be outside for at least six hours a day, weather permitting, obviously, and that that outdoor space must have a minimum of two square feet

for every bird. And again that doesn't sound like much and it's not, but the difference between being able to move around freely when you have two square feet per bird and when you have an iPad per bird is pretty huge, Like you can actually move around and it's not just like being at the worst party you've ever been to. Paste Ray's certified humane as even better than that, the hens must be outdoors year round, with mobile or fixed housing where the hens can nest or rest for

the night. Get out about whether and they are. They get about a hundred and eight square feet per bird a thousand birds for two point five acres. A bird doesn't even know what to do with that much space. Now, they're like, hey, can I build a wing onto my little in house? That's right, and Chuck. One of the big things that they're doing at HAFAC is UM they employ veterinarians, people with advanced degrees and animal studies. Those are the people that go out and visit these farms

to certify them. People who know what they're talking about, people who are not going to be bought off, people with the UM animals welfare in mind, to verify the everybody's meeting these standards before they get that certification. So that's a good one. There are plenty of other ones out there too, But that's UM just based on our research and from what Dave came up with. Two it's like, that's that's a good one to start with. But it's like you said, do your homework. You know, it doesn't

take long either. It's not like you've got to invest hours and hours into this chicken research. Like I guarantee you, wherever you live, you can find some pretty good options with you know, fifteen minutes of research online. That's right. So there you have it. We just need to get on the U s c A to increase to to basically say no, they have to spend a certain amount of time outdoors to be free range. And then we'll go from there because the USDA will probably say fifteen

minutes to start. Uh. If you want to know more about free range chickens and cage free eggs, there's a lot of stuff out there that you can read, and we hope that you will. And since I said we hope that you will, it's time for a listener mail. That's right. This one is called egg on Chuck's face because I've misspoken a big way on our National Parks episode. When I touted disperse camping wherever you want national parks, I meant I was thinking of national forests. That's where

you can do disperse camping wherever you want. And a boy, I said it a bunch, So you can't camp anywhere you want to national parks. Uh, and I feel terrible for that being out there so much that we might even have to edit that. But uh, greetings from your friend and national park ranger. Your episode of National Parks is excellent, and we heard from quite a few park rangers. By the way, I like to address a statement made by Chuck. Some national parks may still allow disperse camping.

It's commonly allowed in national forests. Though national parks and national forests are similar but have different missions and are therefore managed differently. National parks tend to regulate recreation a little more strictly. In fact, many national parks now permit systems in play for backpackers. Yeah, that's very, very true, and those who successfully acquire permits even then are often

restricted to camping and designated back country campsites. This prevents overcrowding and popular destinations, which lessens the amount of abandoned gear, garbage and food scraps and every left behind by certain visitors. Certain visitors I wanted to address us because they're regulating where people camp and how many people can camp in a certain area may seem extreme to some. Helps preserve the wilderness character and solitude so many visitors are seeking

when they visit a national park. Additionally, visitors who disperse camp in a park that requires a designated campsite and or permit may be subject to fines. That's very important for all visitors to research regulations for any park for US or wilderness that they're visiting. Happy hiking and that is uh from our no named park ranger. Park ranger wish to remain anonymous, which is we're always happy to do. Thank you, anonymous park ranger. Happy high king to you

as well. That's right. And I even had one park rangers say, don't make fun of our green shorts. Uh. And to be clear, I don't think those shorts of the same color as as trucks really color I was really making fun of. Maybe they are, but I don't. I don't know if there's a if you could even make a fabric that color, right, they just kind of

appear it doesn't adhere to textiles. Um. Well, thank you very much again, anonymous park ranger, into all the park rangers and everybody who rode into correct Chuck, who, by the way, it took it with a palm, So way we go, Chuck. If you want to get in touch with this via email, like your friendly anonymous park ranger. Did You Can send it to stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production

of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.