There is a difference

The United States Government says there is no difference between a chicken raised outdoors on pasture in the open air and moved daily to fresh forage, and a chicken raised in a giant warehouse with a door to the outside that is open sometimes.

This is clearly not true.

The American Pastured Poultry Producers Association is a trade network of farmers who share tips and ideas on how to better raise poultry on pasture. They produced a video briefly discussing the very real difference between Pasture-Raised poultry and other methods:

“Free Range” Chicken is Fake

“Free range” chicken sold in a big “organic” grocery store chain probably bears very little resemblance to what any of us would expect of a real free range chicken. Real free range chickens are pasture-raised.

Unless the giant corporate mega-farm moves the chickens frequently, the birds are not getting much of any benefit from ranging or foraging. All you have to do is imagine what a flock of chickens or ducks or other birds does in an enclosed space. The area will become covered in bird manure and the plants growing there will be pecked and scratched up. Also consider how far a chicken or pretty much any domestic animal ranges from wherever it is regularly fed every single day. How many animals do you think will leave the food trough to go wade through manure to find some distant forage-able area they don’t even know is there?

Now let’s imagine a hypothetical agribusiness chicken operation with a ventilated warehouse full of several thousand “free range” chickens provided “continuous access” to the outdoors. What does that “outdoors” look like, outside that chicken facility? Do you think there is anything really growing there? Is there a reason for the chickens to leave the warehouse where they are fed? What exactly are they doing or foraging for when they emerge into the urea-blasted moonscape out of the air-conditioned warehouse doors? (It’s air-conditioned because with that many birds in an enclosed box with only a few exits, the CO2 buildup would kill them all without a ventilation system. Pretending this is a bonus is the job of the marketing department.)

The only way to raise chickens that really do forage in fresh, healthy, natural pasture is to move the birds to new pasture on a regular basis. It simply can’t be done with birds raised inside a stationary ventilated giant warehouse with “access to the outdoors”, which is quite likely what is being advertised as “free range” chicken at your closest “organic” supermarket chain.

Don’t waste your money on overpriced fake “free range” chicken. Get the real deal. Pasture-raised at a farm near you.