January 24, 2026 • 54 mins
You’d think terms like cage-free and free-range means the chickens we eat are frolicking happily in the fresh air under the shining sun, but you’d be so, so wrong. Cage-free is a huge improvement but free-range is lacking and both have a long way to go. Find out all about both in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
I've chosen our episode on free range and cage free.
What do they mean? Do they mean anything? Turns out
they do mean something, but not what you'd think. This
is starting to get kind of tough to follow, so
I say, just listen to the episode. But this one
changed my mind about a lot of stuff, and I
hope it opens your eyes too.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck in it. Just something is going on with Chuck.
I'm okay so far, but Jerry's not here because she
turned into the Chicken Lady and his in treatment.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
For that.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Doing the chicken dance.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Do you remember the Chicken Lady from Kids in the Hall?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Oh? Sure, I was referencing the rest of the development. Yeah,
but you're taking it back even further to the great,
great Kids in the Hall.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I can just sit here and quote Kids in the
Hall one liners all day.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I love those guys.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yes, And since you mentioned that, 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 And I'm not surprised you
picked this one, but I just thought since I had
(01:44):
a somewhat scarring experience any commercial chicken farming industry. Yeah,
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 operations to better track how
(02:08):
they lay eggs and how they gain weight, and how
you're feeding them and kind of everything how they're killed.
And I hated that job. It was sole 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
(02:29):
because I was so bad at it. Wow, And that's
the best thing that ever happened to me, because that
led directly to getting this job.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
It's like Garth Brooks said, some of God's greatest gifts
are unanswered prayers. All right, sure, you know made 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.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I didn't have that prayer. I didn't want to be
good at that job.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
But yeah, so this is like all this is probably
pretty well known to you because this is we've been
doing this kind of stuff to chickens for a good
seventy years by now.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Right, Yeah, you know the you know, we're gonna talk
some about factory farming. Finally we've 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
(03:30):
are untrimmed beaks.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, I can peck you till the cows come home,
which is something that happens on the farm.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So let's enough dancing around, Chuck. We're talking about today,
not necessarily factory farming, although like you said, we have
to talk about it. We're gonna talk about those labels
that you see on your eggs or on your chicken,
usually cage free or free range or something along those
lines and other it means anything. But one of the
(04:03):
great successes of the last probably five six, maybe even
ten years or longer, came very quietly out of the
effective altruism community.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Chuck, oh, really yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
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 hens alone worldwide
at any given time, almost eight billion, So if you
(04:37):
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 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 to commit to going one hundred
(05:03):
percent cage free eggs within a very short period of time,
sometimes twenty twenty four, sometimes twenty thirty. But all of
these huge companies, everybody from dan Own 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
(05:24):
in prepared food or eggs you buy in the store,
are going to be one hundred percent cage free eggs
within the next few years. And they did it with
like three million dollars and a lot of elbow grease.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I love it. I think all those companies probably said,
all right, all right, if they're cheese, if they're KG
free eggs out there, will use them, stop hassling me.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, that's what the Burger King said.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, the guy that big uh Yeah, but he said
it with his mind, right, yeah, because his mouth doesn't move.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
But it was a big deal.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I mean, the fact that they got that, that that's happening.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
It's a big deal. And it's one of those things.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Where if you scratch beneath the surface, it's not an
intended pun, but if you scratch beneath the surface, and
a lot of these terms and phrases that the USDA
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 increase in the welfare
(06:27):
and quality of life for egg laying chickens in the
in the United States.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It's a big, big deal.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It is.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
And it's not that 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.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, and I think you know, a lot of people
will agree even k free isn't all it's cracked up
to be.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
There's a lot of like chicken based idioms that we use.
There's suddenly coming to the I hadn't noticed.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
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, and it smells
really really bad. It smells so bad that me and
my one friend that I worked with, Barry, were like,
(07:24):
did sort of the silence of the Lamb's trick with
dabbing some like menthol on our upper lip, under our nostrils,
just so we could walk through these things. And you know,
I think they thought it would benefit us just sort
of just see boots on the ground. What happened. I
was like, I appreciate the feel trip, but it did
not benefit me in any way except hearing things like
(07:47):
oh myn cage or pre 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,
that's kind of true.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, And we shouldn't confused free range with cage free.
They're 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 because it's
coming from the USDA.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, so I guess let's talk about 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 back
in this country. It seems like a long time ago,
But the nineteen forties isn't that long ago in the
lifespan of America. And back then they were still like
(08:35):
feeding America their eggs or its eggs. I don't even
know what America is with backyard chickens. Basically, 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 one hundred eggs
(08:56):
a year, and then after a few years, when they
quit laying eggs, then they would be used for meat.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
They'd turn into Sunday dinner they would.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
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 cages. But if you're a backyard chicken person,
(09:28):
you probably have battery cages that are very large for
two or three four chickens.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
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, 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.
(09:56):
And for the teenage listeners out there, it's smaller than
the size are about the size of an iPad.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Right, Yeah, that's a chick.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
A chicken.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
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 big problem in a minute. They're meant to
be kept basically in one place, and because this stuff
has all been industrialized, their whole job, in everything about
their life is to just sit there and lay egg
after egg after egg. So they're kept in these battery cages.
(10:28):
The battery cages are kept off the ground, which is
good because it means that they're away from parasites and
poop born diseases.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And the eggs are yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
They when they poop, they 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 so they can be stacked. It's modular, so
(11:02):
you can go upward with chickens as well as outward too.
You can really raise a lot of chickens in these
battery cages. Just good if you're a farmer, not really
good if you're a chicken though.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yes, and these chickens, you know, I said that the
backyard chickens of your laid about one hundred eggs a year.
Today's chickens lay closer to three hundred eggs a year
because they are bread as specifically to do so, and
just the way that beyond being bred to do so,
like you said, they're set up as such that it's
just you know, they have made it a very efficient
(11:35):
operation as far as how much they can extract from
each hen.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, that was a real quick chuck.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
That was a big part of the industrialization of farming too,
is breeding practices, to where we started selectively breeding types
of chickens that either laid a perfectly nice brown egg
or ones that gained weight in certain places that we
wanted them to.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Like.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Genetics has been a huge part of that as well.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, we're really lucky because our really really good friends,
Justin and Melissa. I've known Justin since college, you know,
Justin Sure they have chickens. They have these four beautiful
ladies in their backyard. Awesome, and they have a big,
wonderful coup. But anytime they're outside and can safeguard them
from hawks by keeping an eye on them. Those ladies
(12:24):
are running around the yard with their dogs. They somehow
managed to train these dogs to kind of give them
their space. 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.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah, yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Good 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.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Lightly So Justin has chickens in a wine shop. Now
he's living the life.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
O man, it's the American dream realized by my British
import friend.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Look good. So he's doing it. What you could call
the right way, I.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Think, which is to say, very not 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 cage is because,
like again, they can't move. If you put a chicken
(13:26):
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 at at an unnatural pace. And because
(13:51):
it's kind of stuck in this one small place, there's
a lot of things that it can't do that people
who have studied chickens say, chickens to do this or
else they're going to go insane and have a really
horrific life. And that is kind of what the basis
of creating like cage free setups or like genuine free
(14:12):
range setups is it comes from giving chickens a better
life while during those seventy or so weeks that they're alive.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy for somebody, maybe
who doesn't think about it much, to think of a
laying him 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 out on top of
(14:42):
a hamburger or you know, rice crispies a could meal. Ooh,
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 it's
just a handful of them they love. And you know,
(15:02):
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 little
dust bass, which means they roll around on the ground
and they're absorbing oil for their feathers and they're getting
rid of their dead skin, and they're shedding feathers that
(15:23):
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. They're
giving birth. It's a private matter to them, you know,
(15:44):
giving birth in the figurative sense, but it's like they're
doing their business. They don't want a lot of attention.
They like to do this instinctively in private, and they're
not able to do that. 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
(16:05):
battery cages, not can they do. They get so upset
they pecket 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 hen pecked because
they're stressed out from living on an iPad.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, doctor Conrad Lorenz or Lorenz 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. Yeah, the person who knows
something about animals, it is truly heartrending to watch how
(16:43):
a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her
fellow cage mates to search there in vain for cover.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, because they don't get what's going on too. It
is it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, So, like that is an enormous thing. Like, not
only are we forcing them to have two hundred percent
more eggs every year, forcing them to do it against
their instinct basically every day, and they really suffer a
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 rome. Chickens are
(17:15):
very social animals. They like to hang out, they like
to mess with each other. They like to prene one another,
not just pre themselves, but they also need space to
get away from one another. And when they can't do that,
that's when things like henpecking to an injurious degree or
cannibalism where all sorts of terrible zoochosis can happen when
(17:36):
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 it makes sense from a
mechanized industrial standpoint. But back in the day when they
figure this out, these are the same people who resisted
putting seatbelts in cars and got us into Vietnam, you
(17:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yes, this is a segment we like to call Gen
X speaks to millennials and Gen Z about boomers.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
That's right, you got that straight.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
But it's true. They also, you know, alter their diet
and lighting to maximize their output. They don't move around,
so they're obviously, you know what's going to happen when
an animal is just sort of stuck in the small,
tiny thing. They're going to 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
(18:46):
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 going to walk
you through so of You know, a lot of these
are marketing terms, but some of them are legitimate terms
that the USDA allows them to use. In addition to
(19:10):
these great pictures that you see on your egg cartons
of chickens, like, you know, smiling under the sunshine on
a rolling pastoral scene. 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 got to know what all this
(19:32):
stuff means and then even do a little more investigation.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, typical USDA type stuff. But let's take a break
and then we'll get into cage free.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
How about that, Let's get out of the cage.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
If you want to know, and you're in luck, just listen.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Up to Suffu stuff you.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
No, 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 coop. Yeah, that cage free
actually does have some meaning like it Actually if you
(20:21):
look at it compared to the battery cage operations of
your or actually I shouldn't say of yours, there's still
most chickens in the United States at least are still
in battery cages. I think something like seventy percent, which
amounts to two hundred and thirty million hens are currently
in battery cages.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
So it's still going on, still happening.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
But if you if you compare the battery cage to
the cage free operation, it is a substantial difference, for sure.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, Like the more we describe this stuff, there are
levels of getting better, for sure, and k tree is better.
It is greater than it means. And this is a
direct quote from the US. It means the eggs must
be produced by hens housed in a way that allows
for not only unlimited access to food and water. And
(21:09):
you might think, well, duh, but they used to like
keep food from hens, 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 cage tins also provides them freedom to
roam during the laying cycle.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
That's huge.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
But here's the deal is, there aren't any guidelines about
what that access to outdoors means. 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.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
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 hen in a or
a cage free situation has about a 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,
(22:13):
giant barns. The problem is is 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,
(22:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, and you know some of these egg producers are
not the hens, but the operations, so there's only one
egg producer in the scenario. 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 USDA requirement. If you want to look for
(23:16):
requirements that you could look for a label from the
United Egg Producers. They have a different certification guideline for
k tree that's a little more I guess open than
the usdas are restrictive, I guess if you're a farmer.
They must allow hens to exhibit natural behaviors that we
talked about and include enrichments such as scratch areas, purchase,
(23:38):
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 cans and old
batteries and stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Not the crying, ironized cody kind.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
They must have protection from predators and be able to
move through a barn in a manner 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.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
No, and that is much better than the USDA standards.
And the United Egg Producers are an industry industry group
of like egg operators. Like I think there's maybe one
hundred and fifty in the in the United States, which
is way less than there used to be.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
So to produce like almost all the eggs, right.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Yes, yeah, and we export a lot of them too. Surprisingly.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Uh So it's a it's a car, it's a cartel,
like a lobbying group basically for the egg producers.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
And you know, 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 USCA, you know, that's great. Like
their hens are are genuinely like, what's the word, what's
(25:06):
the opposite of suffering? Benefiting from that? But I think
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 these better,
(25:30):
more stricter standards for hen 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 still don't go outside if your hen,
you spend your entire life in one single barn until
(25:51):
you stop producing enough eggs fast enough, and then they
turn you into pet food.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
That's right, sometimes feeding yourself back to your felt chickens.
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. This was someone
telling me this. I didn't find that in my research.
(26:18):
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 there was final approval to use and it sounds gross,
but like fly larvae, and you might think, like that's good.
(26:39):
That is good because that's what chickens would eat if
they were just roaming the countryside, they would eat things
like that.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, so they're starting to be fed things they normally would.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Eat otherwise, which is good.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Their food is still very much controlled and portioned in everything,
but they're starting to be fed things that more resemble
their diet wars before or 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 an egg from a chicken that's been eating fish.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
It's whole life.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Chickens don't eat fish. This egg probably tastes way different
than it should, right, 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 better you treat a chicken, the healthier
the egg it produces.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Is you can just get a and you know, if
you don't have a friend that has a back ear chicken,
there's probably some local farmer's market where some fish fan
will sell you their eggs and 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.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
It just is yeah, totally, you eat one and you
can take on like five cops.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, there's that nutrient. These cage free chickens, whether they're
United Egg Producer Standard or just USDA standard, they still
have their beaks trimmed. When they're ten days old. They're
still force molted. Molting is a natural process, but they
(28:16):
do something called force molting when 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 molt and that
extends their layer life by you know, it's pretty substantial.
It can be like twenty five to forty weeks. So
(28:36):
again they're they're ringing every last egg out of those chickens,
k tree or not.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
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 they're withholding no, it's not naturally happening,
(29:04):
but it's not going to naturally happen during their lifetime anyway,
And it actually is good for them to go through
a molt, But they wouldn't without this induced or forced
molting because they aren't. They aren't subjected to natural light.
They don't get natural light. It's all artificial. They spend
their entire lives basically indoors, almost entirely cut off from
(29:24):
natural light, if not entirely cut off from it.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
See, I thought hens molt by being a hen.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
No.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
No, I think they take their cues from a shorter
duration of days, and then they stop eating quite as much.
Then they go through the molting process, stop laying eggs
as frequently, and.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Then that is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yes, it does, but it's queued by changes in natural light.
And if they're not exposed to natural light, they're not
going to undergo.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
The mold.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Rights. 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.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Right right, yeah, yeah, And that's a natural thing.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
It at all.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Right, Okay, I gotcha. Okay, I thought you were saying
they don't molt normally.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
No, no, no, I would never say something like that.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Now we can move on. Those are hens that lay eggs.
Now we can move on to hens that are raised
for meat. They are called broilers in the industry, and
it's kind of the same deal. Ninety nine percent of
American broiler chickens never see light in this country. They
are in those from the moment they're born as little
(30:52):
chicki 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. I think there was, Dave.
This is pretty startling. They found a calculation that if
(31:13):
you sort of transferred their growth rate to what a
human baby would look like, it would be a three
hundred and forty nine pound baby by their second birthday.
Like baby, hueie, yeah, that's baby, we are, right.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
So the way that they did this is through basically
selective breeding, selecting chickens that 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 not necessarily
(31:49):
a whole chicken. It can also be like you know,
like drumsticks or breasts or thighs or whatever, all that
comes from a broiler chicken. Any chicken you eat is
a broiler chicken. These broiler chickens 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
(32:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yees, six weeks is their lifespan. Yeah, I'll just want
to reiterate that.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
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 wood, right, any normal breed. So during that
six weeks, they're stuck in this litter. If they're in
a situation where they have litter available to them, and
(32:50):
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 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 year in
(33:12):
there they're sitting in.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, this was the hardest part of that tour for me,
and 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, but hopefully
the titled episode would scare off any like vegans who
really don't even want to hear about this. But trigger
warning right here. One of the you know, and this
(33:34):
is what they do when one of the broilers or
any of the chickens are are injured or you know,
winged in some way that isn't 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
(33:55):
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's 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 that's
when Barry and I stepped out and we're like, we're
going to be out here for the rest of the tour,
I can imagine, and I was about to start, Yeah,
(34:20):
I had five cigarettes at the same time, so there's
this writer from the New Yorker named Michael Spencer who
went to a poultry farm and he wrote that there
must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the
floor in front of me.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, it's pretty sobering.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
And those are the brothers, those are the ones we eat, right,
So again, they're bread 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 good life, but it's
for what you just said. It's to harvest or kill
(35:06):
a sicker 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 they found. It's actually like a trade
video that I think is kind of like to sell
all of these different machines. It's called inside the million
(35:30):
dollar chicken farm, Amazing modern chicks, poultry farming 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
(35:50):
two hundred years, you know, like it's really really weird
and unsettling, but then also at the same time deeply fascinating.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah. So the answer then would be free range is
seemingly the solution. So what does that mean. We talked
about cage free and what that means for the USDA.
Any egg or poultry product that can be classified as
free range means the housing for the birds must provide
(36:19):
continuous free access to the outside through their normal growing cycle.
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 ear DA doesn't say 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
(36:43):
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 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
(37:05):
you 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.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
So those huge dark barns with artificial light filled with
tens of thousands of chickens, if you popped a hole
the size of a breadplate into the wall of that barn,
you could call your operation a free range chicken operation.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Now that's it.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
I didn't need to be fair, But technically you're right.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, And like, yes, it is technical that I'm right.
But from the research into just how how much of
a finger the USDA has on what constitutes free range
and who meets those requirements, it's entirely possible that somebody's
just cut a little hole side of the barn and
now is saying free range and could argue that if
(38:03):
an inspector did come out and argued it with them,
they would probably the egg producer would probably win that
argument in court, right.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
I mean, the doors I saw were bigger, and chickens
could easily fit like more than one chicken, like they
were sizable. But again, the whole point is their food
and water is inside, and so chickens are, generally, and
especially when 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,
(38:33):
We're gonna have outdoor class today. Guys, we're gonna put
the water in the food outside. That'll really encourage you
to go outside. They don't care if they go outside
or not.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
So 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 gain since then. But then
even in the United States, Chuck, there's plenty of people
like Justin who are saying, like, no, I actually want
(39:05):
my chickens to be free range, like you would think
free range actually is, and so there's there's 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 pasture
(39:26):
rage seems to be 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 doing what chickens do, given
(39:49):
plenty of space for being chickens, and that's typically pasture raised. Unfortunately,
as far as the usd IS can, the USDA is
considered sure 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 pasture raise too if you want.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, you can't. And if you're saying, well, if you're
saying that some places use pasture rage raised or raged, uh,
that'd be quite a party.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
It's like loosing your pasture if.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
You're saying that some farmers are doing it right, smaller
operations and when they say pasture raise, they mean it.
But technically the U State DA 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 it matters to you,
you got to look up this farm and see what
(40:45):
they're doing. And a lot of times these 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. They generally have websites where you can
and it's all there, you know. I think the USDA,
even tom not demands but requires a I demand a
u URL.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
They take their shoe off and bang it on the desk.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
They require a URL where you can look this stuff
up if you want to.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, the USA 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 getting
things like pasture raised or free range like these are
(41:33):
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 opt it and use it to
their gain. But luckily there are some really legitimate third
party certifiers. And the one that seems to have bubbled
(41:55):
at 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 abbreviation.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah. I think that's a good cliffhanger. Okay, yeah, and
let's take our final break and we'll talk about them
and generally how the USDA determines if it qualifies as
K three or free range. To begin with, if.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
You want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen
up to Jucher Suffus stuffution No.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
All right, So you mentioned a couple of important things
before the break. One is that if you want these certifications,
it is an like egg grating stuff like that you see,
like Grade A eggs. It is a voluntary thing you
have to pay for you can you know you do
it so you can put it on your label so
you can charge more obviously mm hm. And you know,
(43:06):
maybe you care about delivering a higher quality egg. Who knows,
but the DA doesn't like if it's certified organic. They're
not out there doing that certification. That is completely done
by USDA approved certification bodies, and those seem to be
a little more feed on the ground. As far as
(43:27):
actually going to farms and looking at them, the USDA
does not require 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 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 to standards,
(43:50):
along with an affidavit that's signed that it's not false
or misleading. But that's kind of it, Like that's all
the proof they need.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
That's so that's for free range, Yes, cage free they
take way 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 meets those cage free standards,
so that's a good thing. That's another reason why KG
free is a big step up. But yeah, free ranges.
You say, yes, my operation is free range under USDA standards.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
No, I'm not lying, And the.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Usa DA says, good enough, you can put free range
on your labels.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Now, yeah they did. I think they found a study
from that Animal Welfare Institute that examined records from the
FSIS and they found that only one producer out of
one hundred actually submitted photos of the barn showing the
access like I think eighty three out of thee hundred
(44:50):
provided evidence I guess not photographic evidence, but affidavits and
third party kind of certifications, and then seventeen of them
just had zero 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
(45:11):
supposedly what's required.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
But they still got approval from the USDA to label
their stuff as free range.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
I don't want to say the words rubber stamp, but
it seems like it might be that way for sure.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And again, just buyer beware. Free range is synonymous as
far as the USDA is concerned with free roaming pasture
fed pasture, grown pasture raised and meadow raised, and again,
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
(45:43):
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 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,
in particular because Chuck, like you, me and basically anyone
listening to this podcast has a totally different conception of
(46:06):
what free range means, right. And there was a survey
that was done again by the Animal Welfare Institute. They
did it in twenty fifteen, and they went out to people,
just every day people and said, hey, what do you
think free range should should entail? And they came back
with some pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, they you know, as you would expect, sixty five
percent of people thought that free range should mean that
there's enough space outside for every bird to be out
during the day, during daylight hours if they want to be,
and sixty two percent of 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
(46:45):
picture on your cart and of a hen rolling around
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.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
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.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
So we've got to really kind of keep this.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
I never understood that one those are so disturbing, it
really is. This is my brother Lou. We were eating him.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
Later we had a falling out.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Uh So, like I said, if you're if this all
of this is just frustrating and confusing, all you have
to do is do a little leg work or you know,
obviously go to those local farmers' markets because that's where
that's where you're really gett into good stuff and talk
to them. I guarantee you that fish fan is going
to invite you out to their farm to check out
what's going on. Yeah, but you might walk away with
(47:44):
more than eggs. You know what I'm saying, that's right,
that'd be a nice trip. So it literally amia. So
if you do want to figure.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Out like where to get good eggs or what eggs
you can trust, and because it's because you don't trust
a fish fan, 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 fishes?
Speaker 2 (48:12):
To keep them on the couch they belong.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
So again, the humane farm animal care fact, they they
from what I can tell, at least in the United States,
they definitely are legit. And they've come up with some
definitions for their certified humane labels, so that's certified humane
on a like a poultry or some sort of food product.
(48:36):
It actually has met some really good standards. And they
were basically like the USDA'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 be certified humane free range or
certified humane pasture raised that they the producers have to
(48:59):
meet them standards and they're good ones.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
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
(49:23):
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. Pasture Rays Certified humane is 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 weather, and
(49:46):
they are. They get about one hundred and eight square
feet per bird, one thousand birds for two point five acres.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
A bird doesn't even know what to do with that
much space.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
No, they're like, hey, can I build a a wing
onto my little in house?
Speaker 3 (50:01):
That's right, and Chuck.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
One of the big things that they're doing at HAFAC
is 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 animal's welfare in mind, to verify that everybody's
(50:26):
meeting these standards before they get that certification.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
So that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
There are plenty of other ones out there too, but
that's just based on our research and from what Dave
came up with too. It's like, that's that's a good
one to start with. But it's like you said, do
your homework.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
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, right,
I guarantee you, wherever you live, you can find some
pretty good options with you know, fifteen minutes of research
online that's right near you.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yeah, so there you have it. We just need to
get on the.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Increase 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 USA will probably
say fifteen minutes to start. Yeah, if you want to
know more about free range chickens and cage free eggs,
there's a lot of stuff out there that.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
You can read, and we hope that you will.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
And since I said we hope that you will, it's
time for a listener.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Maiw.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
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. Oh, that's
where you can do disperse camping wherever you want. And
a boy, I said it a bunch, So you can't
(51:48):
camp anywhere you want national parks, okay, And I feel
terrible for that being out there so much that we
may even have to edit that. But greetings from your
friend a 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 to purse camping.
(52:09):
It's commonly allowed in national forests. Though 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 place for backpackers. Yeah, that's very, very true, and
those who successfully acquire permits even then are often restricted
(52:32):
to camping and designated backcountry camp sites. This prevents overcrowding
and popular destinations, which lessens the amount of abandoned gear,
garbage and food scraps and heavily left behind by certain visitors.
Certain visitors wanted to address this because though regulating where
people camp and how many people can camp in a
certain area may seem extreme to some, helps preserve the
(52:53):
wilderness character and solitude so many visitors are seeking when
they visit a national park. Only 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
(53:15):
from our no named park ranger. Park ranger wish to
remain anonymous, which is we're always happy to do.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Thank you, anonymous park ranger. Happy hiking to you as well.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
That's right, And I even had one park ranger say,
don't make fun of our green shorts, And to be clear,
I don't think those shorts are the same color as
those trucks, A really color I was really making fun of. Okay,
maybe they are, but I don't know if there's a
if you could even make a fabric that.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Color, right, they just kind of appear.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
It doesn't adhere to textiles.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
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, took it with so wait to 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 iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (54:13):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
I've chosen our episode on free range and cage free.
What do they mean? Do they mean anything? Turns out
they do mean something, but not what you'd think. This
is starting to get kind of tough to follow, so
I say, just listen to the episode. But this one
changed my mind about a lot of stuff, and I
hope it opens your eyes too.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck in it. Just something is going on with Chuck.
I'm okay so far, but Jerry's not here because she
turned into the Chicken Lady and his in treatment.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
For that.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Doing the chicken dance.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Do you remember the Chicken Lady from Kids in the Hall?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Oh? Sure, I was referencing the rest of the development. Yeah,
but you're taking it back even further to the great,
great Kids in the Hall.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I can just sit here and quote Kids in the
Hall one liners all day.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I love those guys.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yes, And since you mentioned that, 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 And I'm not surprised you
picked this one, but I just thought since I had
(01:44):
a somewhat scarring experience any commercial chicken farming industry. Yeah,
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 operations to better track how
(02:08):
they lay eggs and how they gain weight, and how
you're feeding them and kind of everything how they're killed.
And I hated that job. It was sole 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
(02:29):
because I was so bad at it. Wow, And that's
the best thing that ever happened to me, because that
led directly to getting this job.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
It's like Garth Brooks said, some of God's greatest gifts
are unanswered prayers. All right, sure, you know made 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.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I didn't have that prayer. I didn't want to be
good at that job.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
But yeah, so this is like all this is probably
pretty well known to you because this is we've been
doing this kind of stuff to chickens for a good
seventy years by now.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Right, Yeah, you know the you know, we're gonna talk
some about factory farming. Finally we've 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
(03:30):
are untrimmed beaks.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, I can peck you till the cows come home,
which is something that happens on the farm.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So let's enough dancing around, Chuck. We're talking about today,
not necessarily factory farming, although like you said, we have
to talk about it. We're gonna talk about those labels
that you see on your eggs or on your chicken,
usually cage free or free range or something along those
lines and other it means anything. But one of the
(04:03):
great successes of the last probably five six, maybe even
ten years or longer, came very quietly out of the
effective altruism community.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Chuck, oh, really yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
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 hens alone worldwide
at any given time, almost eight billion, So if you
(04:37):
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 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 to commit to going one hundred
(05:03):
percent cage free eggs within a very short period of time,
sometimes twenty twenty four, sometimes twenty thirty. But all of
these huge companies, everybody from dan Own 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
(05:24):
in prepared food or eggs you buy in the store,
are going to be one hundred percent cage free eggs
within the next few years. And they did it with
like three million dollars and a lot of elbow grease.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I love it. I think all those companies probably said,
all right, all right, if they're cheese, if they're KG
free eggs out there, will use them, stop hassling me.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, that's what the Burger King said.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, the guy that big uh Yeah, but he said
it with his mind, right, yeah, because his mouth doesn't move.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
But it was a big deal.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I mean, the fact that they got that, that that's happening.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
It's a big deal. And it's one of those things.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Where if you scratch beneath the surface, it's not an
intended pun, but if you scratch beneath the surface, and
a lot of these terms and phrases that the USDA
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 increase in the welfare
(06:27):
and quality of life for egg laying chickens in the
in the United States.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It's a big, big deal.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It is.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
And it's not that 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.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, and I think you know, a lot of people
will agree even k free isn't all it's cracked up
to be.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
There's a lot of like chicken based idioms that we use.
There's suddenly coming to the I hadn't noticed.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
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, and it smells
really really bad. It smells so bad that me and
my one friend that I worked with, Barry, were like,
(07:24):
did sort of the silence of the Lamb's trick with
dabbing some like menthol on our upper lip, under our nostrils,
just so we could walk through these things. And you know,
I think they thought it would benefit us just sort
of just see boots on the ground. What happened. I
was like, I appreciate the feel trip, but it did
not benefit me in any way except hearing things like
(07:47):
oh myn cage or pre 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,
that's kind of true.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, And we shouldn't confused free range with cage free.
They're 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 because it's
coming from the USDA.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, so I guess let's talk about 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 back
in this country. It seems like a long time ago,
But the nineteen forties isn't that long ago in the
lifespan of America. And back then they were still like
(08:35):
feeding America their eggs or its eggs. I don't even
know what America is with backyard chickens. Basically, 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 one hundred eggs
(08:56):
a year, and then after a few years, when they
quit laying eggs, then they would be used for meat.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
They'd turn into Sunday dinner they would.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
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 cages. But if you're a backyard chicken person,
(09:28):
you probably have battery cages that are very large for
two or three four chickens.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
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, 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.
(09:56):
And for the teenage listeners out there, it's smaller than
the size are about the size of an iPad.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Right, Yeah, that's a chick.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
A chicken.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
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 big problem in a minute. They're meant to
be kept basically in one place, and because this stuff
has all been industrialized, their whole job, in everything about
their life is to just sit there and lay egg
after egg after egg. So they're kept in these battery cages.
(10:28):
The battery cages are kept off the ground, which is
good because it means that they're away from parasites and
poop born diseases.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And the eggs are yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
They when they poop, they 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 so they can be stacked. It's modular, so
(11:02):
you can go upward with chickens as well as outward too.
You can really raise a lot of chickens in these
battery cages. Just good if you're a farmer, not really
good if you're a chicken though.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yes, and these chickens, you know, I said that the
backyard chickens of your laid about one hundred eggs a year.
Today's chickens lay closer to three hundred eggs a year
because they are bread as specifically to do so, and
just the way that beyond being bred to do so,
like you said, they're set up as such that it's
just you know, they have made it a very efficient
(11:35):
operation as far as how much they can extract from
each hen.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, that was a real quick chuck.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
That was a big part of the industrialization of farming too,
is breeding practices, to where we started selectively breeding types
of chickens that either laid a perfectly nice brown egg
or ones that gained weight in certain places that we
wanted them to.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Like.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Genetics has been a huge part of that as well.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, we're really lucky because our really really good friends,
Justin and Melissa. I've known Justin since college, you know,
Justin Sure they have chickens. They have these four beautiful
ladies in their backyard. Awesome, and they have a big,
wonderful coup. But anytime they're outside and can safeguard them
from hawks by keeping an eye on them. Those ladies
(12:24):
are running around the yard with their dogs. They somehow
managed to train these dogs to kind of give them
their space. 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.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah, yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Good 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.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Lightly So Justin has chickens in a wine shop. Now
he's living the life.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
O man, it's the American dream realized by my British
import friend.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Look good. So he's doing it. What you could call
the right way, I.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Think, which is to say, very not 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 cage is because,
like again, they can't move. If you put a chicken
(13:26):
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 at at an unnatural pace. And because
(13:51):
it's kind of stuck in this one small place, there's
a lot of things that it can't do that people
who have studied chickens say, chickens to do this or
else they're going to go insane and have a really
horrific life. And that is kind of what the basis
of creating like cage free setups or like genuine free
(14:12):
range setups is it comes from giving chickens a better
life while during those seventy or so weeks that they're alive.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy for somebody, maybe
who doesn't think about it much, to think of a
laying him 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 out on top of
(14:42):
a hamburger or you know, rice crispies a could meal. Ooh,
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 it's
just a handful of them they love. And you know,
(15:02):
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 little
dust bass, which means they roll around on the ground
and they're absorbing oil for their feathers and they're getting
rid of their dead skin, and they're shedding feathers that
(15:23):
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. They're
giving birth. It's a private matter to them, you know,
(15:44):
giving birth in the figurative sense, but it's like they're
doing their business. They don't want a lot of attention.
They like to do this instinctively in private, and they're
not able to do that. 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
(16:05):
battery cages, not can they do. They get so upset
they pecket 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 hen pecked because
they're stressed out from living on an iPad.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, doctor Conrad Lorenz or Lorenz 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. Yeah, the person who knows
something about animals, it is truly heartrending to watch how
(16:43):
a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her
fellow cage mates to search there in vain for cover.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, because they don't get what's going on too. It
is it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, So, like that is an enormous thing. Like, not
only are we forcing them to have two hundred percent
more eggs every year, forcing them to do it against
their instinct basically every day, and they really suffer a
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 rome. Chickens are
(17:15):
very social animals. They like to hang out, they like
to mess with each other. They like to prene one another,
not just pre themselves, but they also need space to
get away from one another. And when they can't do that,
that's when things like henpecking to an injurious degree or
cannibalism where all sorts of terrible zoochosis can happen when
(17:36):
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 it makes sense from a
mechanized industrial standpoint. But back in the day when they
figure this out, these are the same people who resisted
putting seatbelts in cars and got us into Vietnam, you
(17:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yes, this is a segment we like to call Gen
X speaks to millennials and Gen Z about boomers.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
That's right, you got that straight.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
But it's true. They also, you know, alter their diet
and lighting to maximize their output. They don't move around,
so they're obviously, you know what's going to happen when
an animal is just sort of stuck in the small,
tiny thing. They're going to 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
(18:46):
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 going to walk
you through so of You know, a lot of these
are marketing terms, but some of them are legitimate terms
that the USDA allows them to use. In addition to
(19:10):
these great pictures that you see on your egg cartons
of chickens, like, you know, smiling under the sunshine on
a rolling pastoral scene. 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 got to know what all this
(19:32):
stuff means and then even do a little more investigation.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, typical USDA type stuff. But let's take a break
and then we'll get into cage free.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
How about that, Let's get out of the cage.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
If you want to know, and you're in luck, just listen.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Up to Suffu stuff you.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
No, 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 coop. Yeah, that cage free
actually does have some meaning like it Actually if you
(20:21):
look at it compared to the battery cage operations of
your or actually I shouldn't say of yours, there's still
most chickens in the United States at least are still
in battery cages. I think something like seventy percent, which
amounts to two hundred and thirty million hens are currently
in battery cages.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
So it's still going on, still happening.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
But if you if you compare the battery cage to
the cage free operation, it is a substantial difference, for sure.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, Like the more we describe this stuff, there are
levels of getting better, for sure, and k tree is better.
It is greater than it means. And this is a
direct quote from the US. It means the eggs must
be produced by hens housed in a way that allows
for not only unlimited access to food and water. And
(21:09):
you might think, well, duh, but they used to like
keep food from hens, 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 cage tins also provides them freedom to
roam during the laying cycle.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
That's huge.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
But here's the deal is, there aren't any guidelines about
what that access to outdoors means. 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.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
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 hen in a or
a cage free situation has about a 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,
(22:13):
giant barns. The problem is is 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,
(22:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, and you know some of these egg producers are
not the hens, but the operations, so there's only one
egg producer in the scenario. 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 USDA requirement. If you want to look for
(23:16):
requirements that you could look for a label from the
United Egg Producers. They have a different certification guideline for
k tree that's a little more I guess open than
the usdas are restrictive, I guess if you're a farmer.
They must allow hens to exhibit natural behaviors that we
talked about and include enrichments such as scratch areas, purchase,
(23:38):
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 cans and old
batteries and stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Not the crying, ironized cody kind.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
They must have protection from predators and be able to
move through a barn in a manner 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.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
No, and that is much better than the USDA standards.
And the United Egg Producers are an industry industry group
of like egg operators. Like I think there's maybe one
hundred and fifty in the in the United States, which
is way less than there used to be.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
So to produce like almost all the eggs, right.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Yes, yeah, and we export a lot of them too. Surprisingly.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Uh So it's a it's a car, it's a cartel,
like a lobbying group basically for the egg producers.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
And you know, 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 USCA, you know, that's great. Like
their hens are are genuinely like, what's the word, what's
(25:06):
the opposite of suffering? Benefiting from that? But I think
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 these better,
(25:30):
more stricter standards for hen 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 still don't go outside if your hen,
you spend your entire life in one single barn until
(25:51):
you stop producing enough eggs fast enough, and then they
turn you into pet food.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
That's right, sometimes feeding yourself back to your felt chickens.
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. This was someone
telling me this. I didn't find that in my research.
(26:18):
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 there was final approval to use and it sounds gross,
but like fly larvae, and you might think, like that's good.
(26:39):
That is good because that's what chickens would eat if
they were just roaming the countryside, they would eat things
like that.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, so they're starting to be fed things they normally would.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Eat otherwise, which is good.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Their food is still very much controlled and portioned in everything,
but they're starting to be fed things that more resemble
their diet wars before or 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 an egg from a chicken that's been eating fish.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
It's whole life.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Chickens don't eat fish. This egg probably tastes way different
than it should, right, 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 better you treat a chicken, the healthier
the egg it produces.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Is you can just get a and you know, if
you don't have a friend that has a back ear chicken,
there's probably some local farmer's market where some fish fan
will sell you their eggs and 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.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
It just is yeah, totally, you eat one and you
can take on like five cops.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, there's that nutrient. These cage free chickens, whether they're
United Egg Producer Standard or just USDA standard, they still
have their beaks trimmed. When they're ten days old. They're
still force molted. Molting is a natural process, but they
(28:16):
do something called force molting when 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 molt and that
extends their layer life by you know, it's pretty substantial.
It can be like twenty five to forty weeks. So
(28:36):
again they're they're ringing every last egg out of those chickens,
k tree or not.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
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 they're withholding no, it's not naturally happening,
(29:04):
but it's not going to naturally happen during their lifetime anyway,
And it actually is good for them to go through
a molt, But they wouldn't without this induced or forced
molting because they aren't. They aren't subjected to natural light.
They don't get natural light. It's all artificial. They spend
their entire lives basically indoors, almost entirely cut off from
(29:24):
natural light, if not entirely cut off from it.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
See, I thought hens molt by being a hen.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
No.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
No, I think they take their cues from a shorter
duration of days, and then they stop eating quite as much.
Then they go through the molting process, stop laying eggs
as frequently, and.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Then that is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yes, it does, but it's queued by changes in natural light.
And if they're not exposed to natural light, they're not
going to undergo.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
The mold.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Rights. 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.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Right right, yeah, yeah, And that's a natural thing.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
It at all.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Right, Okay, I gotcha. Okay, I thought you were saying
they don't molt normally.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
No, no, no, I would never say something like that.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Now we can move on. Those are hens that lay eggs.
Now we can move on to hens that are raised
for meat. They are called broilers in the industry, and
it's kind of the same deal. Ninety nine percent of
American broiler chickens never see light in this country. They
are in those from the moment they're born as little
(30:52):
chicki 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. I think there was, Dave.
This is pretty startling. They found a calculation that if
(31:13):
you sort of transferred their growth rate to what a
human baby would look like, it would be a three
hundred and forty nine pound baby by their second birthday.
Like baby, hueie, yeah, that's baby, we are, right.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
So the way that they did this is through basically
selective breeding, selecting chickens that 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 not necessarily
(31:49):
a whole chicken. It can also be like you know,
like drumsticks or breasts or thighs or whatever, all that
comes from a broiler chicken. Any chicken you eat is
a broiler chicken. These broiler chickens 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
(32:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yees, six weeks is their lifespan. Yeah, I'll just want
to reiterate that.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
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 wood, right, any normal breed. So during that
six weeks, they're stuck in this litter. If they're in
a situation where they have litter available to them, and
(32:50):
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 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 year in
(33:12):
there they're sitting in.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, this was the hardest part of that tour for me,
and 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, but hopefully
the titled episode would scare off any like vegans who
really don't even want to hear about this. But trigger
warning right here. One of the you know, and this
(33:34):
is what they do when one of the broilers or
any of the chickens are are injured or you know,
winged in some way that isn't 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
(33:55):
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's 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 that's
when Barry and I stepped out and we're like, we're
going to be out here for the rest of the tour,
I can imagine, and I was about to start, Yeah,
(34:20):
I had five cigarettes at the same time, so there's
this writer from the New Yorker named Michael Spencer who
went to a poultry farm and he wrote that there
must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the
floor in front of me.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, it's pretty sobering.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
And those are the brothers, those are the ones we eat, right,
So again, they're bread 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 good life, but it's
for what you just said. It's to harvest or kill
(35:06):
a sicker 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 they found. It's actually like a trade
video that I think is kind of like to sell
all of these different machines. It's called inside the million
(35:30):
dollar chicken farm, Amazing modern chicks, poultry farming 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
(35:50):
two hundred years, you know, like it's really really weird
and unsettling, but then also at the same time deeply fascinating.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah. So the answer then would be free range is
seemingly the solution. So what does that mean. We talked
about cage free and what that means for the USDA.
Any egg or poultry product that can be classified as
free range means the housing for the birds must provide
(36:19):
continuous free access to the outside through their normal growing cycle.
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 ear DA doesn't say 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
(36:43):
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 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
(37:05):
you 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.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
So those huge dark barns with artificial light filled with
tens of thousands of chickens, if you popped a hole
the size of a breadplate into the wall of that barn,
you could call your operation a free range chicken operation.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Now that's it.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
I didn't need to be fair, But technically you're right.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, And like, yes, it is technical that I'm right.
But from the research into just how how much of
a finger the USDA has on what constitutes free range
and who meets those requirements, it's entirely possible that somebody's
just cut a little hole side of the barn and
now is saying free range and could argue that if
(38:03):
an inspector did come out and argued it with them,
they would probably the egg producer would probably win that
argument in court, right.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
I mean, the doors I saw were bigger, and chickens
could easily fit like more than one chicken, like they
were sizable. But again, the whole point is their food
and water is inside, and so chickens are, generally, and
especially when 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,
(38:33):
We're gonna have outdoor class today. Guys, we're gonna put
the water in the food outside. That'll really encourage you
to go outside. They don't care if they go outside
or not.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
So 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 gain since then. But then
even in the United States, Chuck, there's plenty of people
like Justin who are saying, like, no, I actually want
(39:05):
my chickens to be free range, like you would think
free range actually is, and so there's there's 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 pasture
(39:26):
rage seems to be 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 doing what chickens do, given
(39:49):
plenty of space for being chickens, and that's typically pasture raised. Unfortunately,
as far as the usd IS can, the USDA is
considered sure 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 pasture raise too if you want.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, you can't. And if you're saying, well, if you're
saying that some places use pasture rage raised or raged, uh,
that'd be quite a party.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
It's like loosing your pasture if.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
You're saying that some farmers are doing it right, smaller
operations and when they say pasture raise, they mean it.
But technically the U State DA 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 it matters to you,
you got to look up this farm and see what
(40:45):
they're doing. And a lot of times these 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. They generally have websites where you can
and it's all there, you know. I think the USDA,
even tom not demands but requires a I demand a
u URL.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
They take their shoe off and bang it on the desk.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
They require a URL where you can look this stuff
up if you want to.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, the USA 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 getting
things like pasture raised or free range like these are
(41:33):
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 opt it and use it to
their gain. But luckily there are some really legitimate third
party certifiers. And the one that seems to have bubbled
(41:55):
at 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 abbreviation.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah. I think that's a good cliffhanger. Okay, yeah, and
let's take our final break and we'll talk about them
and generally how the USDA determines if it qualifies as
K three or free range. To begin with, if.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
You want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen
up to Jucher Suffus stuffution No.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
All right, So you mentioned a couple of important things
before the break. One is that if you want these certifications,
it is an like egg grating stuff like that you see,
like Grade A eggs. It is a voluntary thing you
have to pay for you can you know you do
it so you can put it on your label so
you can charge more obviously mm hm. And you know,
(43:06):
maybe you care about delivering a higher quality egg. Who knows,
but the DA doesn't like if it's certified organic. They're
not out there doing that certification. That is completely done
by USDA approved certification bodies, and those seem to be
a little more feed on the ground. As far as
(43:27):
actually going to farms and looking at them, the USDA
does not require 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 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 to standards,
(43:50):
along with an affidavit that's signed that it's not false
or misleading. But that's kind of it, Like that's all
the proof they need.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
That's so that's for free range, Yes, cage free they
take way 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 meets those cage free standards,
so that's a good thing. That's another reason why KG
free is a big step up. But yeah, free ranges.
You say, yes, my operation is free range under USDA standards.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
No, I'm not lying, And the.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Usa DA says, good enough, you can put free range
on your labels.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Now, yeah they did. I think they found a study
from that Animal Welfare Institute that examined records from the
FSIS and they found that only one producer out of
one hundred actually submitted photos of the barn showing the
access like I think eighty three out of thee hundred
(44:50):
provided evidence I guess not photographic evidence, but affidavits and
third party kind of certifications, and then seventeen of them
just had zero 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
(45:11):
supposedly what's required.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
But they still got approval from the USDA to label
their stuff as free range.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
I don't want to say the words rubber stamp, but
it seems like it might be that way for sure.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And again, just buyer beware. Free range is synonymous as
far as the USDA is concerned with free roaming pasture
fed pasture, grown pasture raised and meadow raised, and again,
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
(45:43):
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 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,
in particular because Chuck, like you, me and basically anyone
listening to this podcast has a totally different conception of
(46:06):
what free range means, right. And there was a survey
that was done again by the Animal Welfare Institute. They
did it in twenty fifteen, and they went out to people,
just every day people and said, hey, what do you
think free range should should entail? And they came back
with some pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, they you know, as you would expect, sixty five
percent of people thought that free range should mean that
there's enough space outside for every bird to be out
during the day, during daylight hours if they want to be,
and sixty two percent of 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
(46:45):
picture on your cart and of a hen rolling around
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.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
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.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
So we've got to really kind of keep this.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
I never understood that one those are so disturbing, it
really is. This is my brother Lou. We were eating him.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
Later we had a falling out.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Uh So, like I said, if you're if this all
of this is just frustrating and confusing, all you have
to do is do a little leg work or you know,
obviously go to those local farmers' markets because that's where
that's where you're really gett into good stuff and talk
to them. I guarantee you that fish fan is going
to invite you out to their farm to check out
what's going on. Yeah, but you might walk away with
(47:44):
more than eggs. You know what I'm saying, that's right,
that'd be a nice trip. So it literally amia. So
if you do want to figure.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Out like where to get good eggs or what eggs
you can trust, and because it's because you don't trust
a fish fan, 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 fishes?
Speaker 2 (48:12):
To keep them on the couch they belong.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
So again, the humane farm animal care fact, they they
from what I can tell, at least in the United States,
they definitely are legit. And they've come up with some
definitions for their certified humane labels, so that's certified humane
on a like a poultry or some sort of food product.
(48:36):
It actually has met some really good standards. And they
were basically like the USDA'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 be certified humane free range or
certified humane pasture raised that they the producers have to
(48:59):
meet them standards and they're good ones.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
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
(49:23):
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. Pasture Rays Certified humane is 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 weather, and
(49:46):
they are. They get about one hundred and eight square
feet per bird, one thousand birds for two point five acres.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
A bird doesn't even know what to do with that
much space.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
No, they're like, hey, can I build a a wing
onto my little in house?
Speaker 3 (50:01):
That's right, and Chuck.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
One of the big things that they're doing at HAFAC
is 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 animal's welfare in mind, to verify that everybody's
(50:26):
meeting these standards before they get that certification.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
So that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
There are plenty of other ones out there too, but
that's just based on our research and from what Dave
came up with too. It's like, that's that's a good
one to start with. But it's like you said, do
your homework.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
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, right,
I guarantee you, wherever you live, you can find some
pretty good options with you know, fifteen minutes of research
online that's right near you.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yeah, so there you have it. We just need to
get on the.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Increase 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 USA will probably
say fifteen minutes to start. Yeah, if you want to
know more about free range chickens and cage free eggs,
there's a lot of stuff out there that.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
You can read, and we hope that you will.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
And since I said we hope that you will, it's
time for a listener.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Maiw.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
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. Oh, that's
where you can do disperse camping wherever you want. And
a boy, I said it a bunch, So you can't
(51:48):
camp anywhere you want national parks, okay, And I feel
terrible for that being out there so much that we
may even have to edit that. But greetings from your
friend a 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 to purse camping.
(52:09):
It's commonly allowed in national forests. Though 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 place for backpackers. Yeah, that's very, very true, and
those who successfully acquire permits even then are often restricted
(52:32):
to camping and designated backcountry camp sites. This prevents overcrowding
and popular destinations, which lessens the amount of abandoned gear,
garbage and food scraps and heavily left behind by certain visitors.
Certain visitors wanted to address this because though regulating where
people camp and how many people can camp in a
certain area may seem extreme to some, helps preserve the
(52:53):
wilderness character and solitude so many visitors are seeking when
they visit a national park. Only 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
(53:15):
from our no named park ranger. Park ranger wish to
remain anonymous, which is we're always happy to do.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Thank you, anonymous park ranger. Happy hiking to you as well.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
That's right, And I even had one park ranger say,
don't make fun of our green shorts, And to be clear,
I don't think those shorts are the same color as
those trucks, A really color I was really making fun of. Okay,
maybe they are, but I don't know if there's a
if you could even make a fabric that.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Color, right, they just kind of appear.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
It doesn't adhere to textiles.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
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, took it with so wait to 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 iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (54:13):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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