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The Truth Behind Cage-Free and Free-Range · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and it's just something is going on
0:17
Speaker 1: with Chuck. I'm okay so far, but Jerry's not here
0:22
Speaker 1: because she turned into the Chicken Lady in his in
0:25
Speaker 1: treatment for that doing the chicken dance. Do you remember
0:29
Speaker 1: the chicken lady from Kids in the Hall? Oh? Sure,
0:33
Speaker 1: I was referencing arrest the development cock Cuck call. Yeah,
0:38
Speaker 1: but you're you're taking aback even further to the great
0:41
Speaker 1: great kids in the Hall. That's right. I can just
0:44
Speaker 1: sit here and quote Kids in the Hall one liners
0:46
Speaker 1: all day. I love those guys. So that's not what
0:50
Speaker 1: we're here to do, though, Chuck, settle down, settle down.
0:53
Speaker 1: We're going away from the kids in the Hall. Yes,
0:58
Speaker 1: and since you mentioned that, Uh, what we're also not
1:01
Speaker 1: here to do is shame anybody or make anyone feel bad,
1:07
Speaker 1: or to tell anyone how to live their life and
1:09
Speaker 1: eat their breakfast. But we're here to arm you with
1:12
Speaker 1: information on this one about uh. And I'm not surprised
1:17
Speaker 1: you picked this one, but I just thought, since I
1:19
Speaker 1: had somewhat scarring experience a commercial chicken farming industry. For
1:26
Speaker 1: those of you listening that don't know this, one of
1:28
Speaker 1: my last real person jobs before this job many years ago,
1:33
Speaker 1: as I worked for a software company that designed software
1:37
Speaker 1: for commercial chicken uh operations to better track how they
1:43
Speaker 1: lay eggs and how they gain weight and how you're
1:46
Speaker 1: feeding them and kind of everything how they're killed uh.
1:49
Speaker 1: And I hated that job. It was sold killing and
1:52
Speaker 1: I never understood it. I never invested in it, and
1:55
Speaker 1: as far as understanding the software, and I was in
1:58
Speaker 1: tech support, and so I was terrible at it. But
2:01
Speaker 1: my friends ran the company and eventually they fired me
2:04
Speaker 1: because I was so bad at it. And that's the
2:07
Speaker 1: best thing that ever happened to me, because that led
2:09
Speaker 1: directly to getting this job. It's like Garth Brooks said,
2:13
Speaker 1: some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. All Right,
2:19
Speaker 1: you know your prayer to be good at your chicken
2:23
Speaker 1: killing software job was unanswered and instead an even better
2:27
Speaker 1: prayer that you didn't even know you had was answered. Yeah.
2:31
Speaker 1: I didn't have that prayer. I didn't want to be
2:32
Speaker 1: good at that job. But yeah, so this is like
2:35
Speaker 1: all this is probably pretty well known to you because
2:38
Speaker 1: this this is We've been doing this kind of stuff
2:41
Speaker 1: to chickens for a good seventy years by now, right, Yeah,
2:46
Speaker 1: and you know the you know, we're going to talk
2:48
Speaker 1: some about factory farming. Finally. I don't think we've dodged it,
2:52
Speaker 1: but people have, you know, long said hey, guys, can
2:55
Speaker 1: you get into this? And you know we're not touching
2:58
Speaker 1: cattle or swine. We're just starting dipping our toe into
3:01
Speaker 1: it with poultry, dipping our beaks, dipping our beaks untrimmed beaks. Yeah,
3:08
Speaker 1: I can peck you till the cows come home, which
3:11
Speaker 1: is something that happens on the farm. That's right. So
3:15
Speaker 1: let's enough dancing around, chuck Um. We're talking about today,
3:19
Speaker 1: not not necessarily factory farming all the like you said,
3:22
Speaker 1: we have to talk about We're gonna talk about those
3:25
Speaker 1: labels that you see on your eggs or on your chicken,
3:28
Speaker 1: usually cage free or UM free range or something along
3:33
Speaker 1: those lines, and whether it means anything. But one of
3:37
Speaker 1: the great successes of the last probably five six, maybe
3:42
Speaker 1: even ten years or longer Um came very quietly out
3:47
Speaker 1: of the effective altruism community. Chuck Yeah, A group of
3:52
Speaker 1: effective altruists said, you know, we're always looking to maximize
3:55
Speaker 1: our charitable contributions. There's a lot of chickens out there
4:00
Speaker 1: that are not being treated very well. Supposedly, there's seven
4:03
Speaker 1: point six billion egg laying hands alone worldwide at any
4:09
Speaker 1: given time, almost eight billion, So if you could improve
4:13
Speaker 1: the lives of them even by a little bit, you
4:15
Speaker 1: would really be reducing a massive amount of suffering. So
4:19
Speaker 1: they got three million dollars together, and like um Laser,
4:23
Speaker 1: focused it on advocacy, lobbying, getting legislation put through, and
4:28
Speaker 1: then most of all pressuring really really big companies. They
4:32
Speaker 1: went after some whales um to to commit to going
4:37
Speaker 1: on cage free eggs within a very short period of time,
4:41
Speaker 1: sometimes four sometimes twenty thirty UM but all of these
4:46
Speaker 1: huge companies, everybody from dan Owe to Burger King to
4:49
Speaker 1: McDonald's to Whole Foods not surprisingly but also like Dollar General,
4:54
Speaker 1: all of them have signed a pledge that says, all
4:56
Speaker 1: of the eggs that our customers buy, whether it's imprepared
5:00
Speaker 1: food or eggs you buy in the store, are going
5:02
Speaker 1: to be one cage free eggs within the next few years.
5:07
Speaker 1: And they did it with like three million dollars and
5:09
Speaker 1: and a lot of elbow grease. I think all those
5:12
Speaker 1: companies probably said, alright, alright, if they're cheese, if they're
5:17
Speaker 1: cage free, eggs out there, will use them stops. That's
5:20
Speaker 1: what the burger king said. Yeah, the guy that he
5:25
Speaker 1: said it with his mind, yeah, because his mouth doesn't move.
5:30
Speaker 1: But it was a big deal. I mean, the fact
5:32
Speaker 1: that they got that, that that that's happening. It's a
5:35
Speaker 1: big deal. And one it's one of those things where, um,
5:38
Speaker 1: if you scratch beneath the surface, it's not an intended punt,
5:43
Speaker 1: but if you scratch beneath the surface, and a lot
5:45
Speaker 1: of these terms and phrases that the U. S d
5:47
Speaker 1: A likes to bandy about, things like cage free and
5:50
Speaker 1: things like free range and stuff like that, it's often
5:53
Speaker 1: really disappointing. But that's one of the things about cage
5:56
Speaker 1: free is that it is an actual, substantial will increase
6:01
Speaker 1: in the welfare and quality of life for egg laying
6:04
Speaker 1: chickens in the in the United States. It's a big,
6:08
Speaker 1: big deal. And it's not that they're they're they're in
6:12
Speaker 1: these amazing conditions all of a sudden with cage free.
6:15
Speaker 1: It's that they're in such poor conditions otherwise that this
6:20
Speaker 1: is a huge improvement for them. Yeah, and I think
6:23
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people agree. Even cage free
6:26
Speaker 1: isn't all it's cracked up to be. Um, But there
6:29
Speaker 1: a lot of like chicken based idioms that we use.
6:33
Speaker 1: There's suddenly coming to the Uh. When I worked with
6:38
Speaker 1: that company, they made everybody at one point, even if
6:40
Speaker 1: you didn't do like project management where you had to
6:43
Speaker 1: go to the farms, they made us all go to
6:45
Speaker 1: the farms and tech support at one point. And I
6:47
Speaker 1: know I've told the story before, but it was a
6:49
Speaker 1: pretty awful experience. Uh. And it smells really really bad.
6:53
Speaker 1: It smells so bad that me and my one friend
6:56
Speaker 1: that I worked with, Barry Um, were like, did the
6:59
Speaker 1: sort of the silence to the Lamb's trick with dabbing
7:02
Speaker 1: some uh like menthal on our upper lip under our nostrils,
7:07
Speaker 1: just so we could walk through these things. Uh. And
7:11
Speaker 1: you know that I think they thought it would benefit
7:12
Speaker 1: as just sort of just see boots on the ground.
7:14
Speaker 1: What happened. I was like, it's I appreciate the peel trip,
7:17
Speaker 1: but it did not benefit me in any way except
7:21
Speaker 1: hearing things like oh man, cage or free range just
7:25
Speaker 1: means there's a door open, they don't even use it.
7:27
Speaker 1: And I heard this back then. I was like, oh
7:29
Speaker 1: my gosh, is that true. And as it turns out,
7:31
Speaker 1: as we'll see, if that's kind of true. Yeah, And
7:34
Speaker 1: we shouldn't confuse free range with cage free. There are
7:37
Speaker 1: two different things. We'll describe them both. But yeah, yeah,
7:40
Speaker 1: so cage free is a huge improvement. Free range is
7:42
Speaker 1: as bad as you'd expect it to be, basic because
7:45
Speaker 1: it's coming from the U. S t A. Yeah, So
7:48
Speaker 1: I guess let's talk about um let's briefly, and big
7:51
Speaker 1: thanks to Dave Ruse for helping us out with this one.
7:54
Speaker 1: But Dave starts out with a little bit of history,
7:56
Speaker 1: and I think that's a good place to start because
7:58
Speaker 1: you don't have to look very far. Are back in
8:00
Speaker 1: this country. Uh, it seems like a long time ago,
8:03
Speaker 1: but the nineteen forties isn't that long ago in the
8:06
Speaker 1: in the lifespan of America. And back then they were
8:10
Speaker 1: still like feeding America their eggs or its eggs. I
8:15
Speaker 1: don't even know what America is um with backyard chickens basically,
8:20
Speaker 1: um they were big farms, of course, but they weren't
8:22
Speaker 1: like these big, massive battery cages that we see today.
8:26
Speaker 1: They were hens living outdoors, generally on farms, laid about
8:30
Speaker 1: a hundred eggs a year. Uh. And then after a
8:34
Speaker 1: few years when they quit laying eggs, then they would
8:37
Speaker 1: be used for meat. They'd turn into Sunday dinner they
8:40
Speaker 1: would uh. And these days, starting in like the fifties,
8:44
Speaker 1: things became a little more industrialized and mechanized, and that's
8:47
Speaker 1: when battery cages came into play. Which is the wire
8:51
Speaker 1: cage that you might like. If you have friends that
8:54
Speaker 1: have backyard chickens, you probably built them a large coupe
8:57
Speaker 1: and within that coup some battery ca just but if
9:01
Speaker 1: you're a backyard chicken person, you probably have battery cages
9:04
Speaker 1: that are very large for two or three for chickens. Yeah,
9:08
Speaker 1: these are not the battery cages that they're raised in.
9:10
Speaker 1: After farming became industrialized in the fifties, like these things
9:14
Speaker 1: are usually have I've seen anywhere between three and seven
9:18
Speaker 1: chickens in there, um and usually each one has about
9:23
Speaker 1: the amount of space about a little lower or a
9:28
Speaker 1: little smaller than the size of a standard piece of paper.
9:31
Speaker 1: And for the the teenage listeners out there, smaller than
9:34
Speaker 1: the size about the size of an iPad. Yeah, that's
9:39
Speaker 1: a chicken. A chicken. They can't move around, they can't
9:42
Speaker 1: flap their wings, they can't do a lot of stuff
9:44
Speaker 1: that we'll find out is a is a big problem
9:47
Speaker 1: in a minute. Um they're meant to be kept basically
9:51
Speaker 1: in one place, and because this stuff has all been industrialized,
9:55
Speaker 1: their whole job and everything about their life is to
9:58
Speaker 1: just sit there and lay egg after or egg after egg.
10:01
Speaker 1: So they're kept in these battery cages. The battery cages
10:04
Speaker 1: are kept off the ground, which is good because it
10:07
Speaker 1: means that they're away from parasites and poop borne diseases.
10:10
Speaker 1: And the eggs are yeah, they when they poop, they
10:14
Speaker 1: it falls onto a conveyor belt that carries the poop away,
10:17
Speaker 1: so it's a little more sanitary. When they lay an egg,
10:19
Speaker 1: the bottom of the cage is slanted downward, so it
10:23
Speaker 1: rolls downward onto a different conveyor belt thankfully, that whisks
10:27
Speaker 1: the egg away. So the whole thing is really automated.
10:30
Speaker 1: And because these cages are are so um uh uniform,
10:35
Speaker 1: they can be stacked. It's modular, so you can go
10:38
Speaker 1: upward with chickens as well as outward too. You can
10:41
Speaker 1: really raise a lot of chickens in these battery cages,
10:43
Speaker 1: which is good if you're a farmer, not really good
10:46
Speaker 1: if you're a chicken though. Yes, and these chickens. You know,
10:49
Speaker 1: I said that the backyard chickens of your uh laid
10:53
Speaker 1: about a hundred eggs a year. Today's chickens lay closer
10:56
Speaker 1: to three hundred eggs a year. Because they are bread
10:59
Speaker 1: is scifically to do so, and just the way beyond
11:03
Speaker 1: being bred to do so, Like you said, they're set
11:05
Speaker 1: up as such that it's just uh, you know, they
11:09
Speaker 1: have made it a very efficient operation as far as
11:12
Speaker 1: how much they can extract from each hen. Yeah, that
11:15
Speaker 1: was a real quick check. That was a big part
11:17
Speaker 1: of the industrialization of farming. Two is is breeding practices
11:21
Speaker 1: to where we started selectively breeding types of chickens that
11:26
Speaker 1: either laid a perfectly nice brown egg or um ones
11:30
Speaker 1: that gained weight in certain places that we wanted them to. Like.
11:34
Speaker 1: Genetics has been a huge part of that as well. Yeah,
11:37
Speaker 1: we're really lucky because are really really good friends. Justin
11:40
Speaker 1: and Melissa. I've known Justin since college, you know, Justin
11:45
Speaker 1: he uh, they have chickens. They have these four beautiful
11:47
Speaker 1: ladies in their backyard. Uh. And they have a big,
11:51
Speaker 1: wonderful coupe but anytime they're outside uh and can safeguard
11:55
Speaker 1: them from hawks by keeping an eye on them. Those
11:58
Speaker 1: those ladies are running around the yard with their dogs.
12:02
Speaker 1: They've somehow managed to train these dogs to kind of
12:04
Speaker 1: give them their space. Uh. And it's great. And you know,
12:08
Speaker 1: they give us eggs and we spend money in their
12:11
Speaker 1: wine shop and it's a great symbiotic relationship that is
12:14
Speaker 1: really great. Yeah, yeah, it's a good. Uh. We we
12:17
Speaker 1: save our cartons and stuff when we do have to
12:18
Speaker 1: buy eggs, so they have cartons to give out to
12:21
Speaker 1: their friends because these ladies are laying a lot of eggs. Lightly.
12:24
Speaker 1: So Justin has a chickens in a wine shop. Now
12:28
Speaker 1: he's living the life. Oh man, it's the American dream
12:32
Speaker 1: realized by my British import friend. Look good. So he's
12:38
Speaker 1: doing it what you could call the right way, I think, um,
12:41
Speaker 1: which is to say they're very necessarily the profit maximizing way.
12:46
Speaker 1: But the chickens are, you would guess, much happier than
12:49
Speaker 1: the ones that are in these battery cages. And one
12:52
Speaker 1: of the reasons why we would say the chickens are
12:55
Speaker 1: not so happy in the battery cages because like again,
12:59
Speaker 1: they can't move. If you put a chicken on a
13:02
Speaker 1: piece of paper, it's going to take up most of
13:04
Speaker 1: that piece of paper or iPad, right, So when you
13:08
Speaker 1: visualize that, you suddenly get like, this is this is
13:11
Speaker 1: for the whole for its whole life, usually somewhere around
13:14
Speaker 1: seventy weeks. This is how it spends almost all of
13:18
Speaker 1: that time in this little cage, just laying eggs, laying
13:21
Speaker 1: eggs to an unnatural at an unnatural pace. And because
13:26
Speaker 1: it's kind of stuck in this this one small place,
13:29
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that it can't do that
13:32
Speaker 1: people who have studied chickens say, chickens need to do
13:35
Speaker 1: this or else they're going to go insane and have
13:37
Speaker 1: a really horrific life. Um, and that is kind of
13:41
Speaker 1: what the basis of creating like cage free setups or
13:46
Speaker 1: like genuine free range setups is. It comes from giving
13:50
Speaker 1: chickens a better life while during those seventy or so
13:53
Speaker 1: weeks that they're alive. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
13:56
Speaker 1: easy for somebody maybe who doesn't think about it much
14:00
Speaker 1: to think of a laying hen as just this sort
14:04
Speaker 1: of organic egg machine, like a living egg machine. Not
14:09
Speaker 1: organic in the sense that it's you know, sort of
14:10
Speaker 1: hard organic, but a living machine that just pumps out
14:13
Speaker 1: these eggs that we love to eat for breakfast or
14:16
Speaker 1: on top of a hamburger or you know, a good meal. Oh,
14:22
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but that's not the case. Like,
14:26
Speaker 1: these birds have personalities and they have behaviors that they
14:31
Speaker 1: want to do and that they normally do, like, uh,
14:35
Speaker 1: it's just a handful of them they love. And you know,
14:37
Speaker 1: you can see this when I go over to Justin
14:39
Speaker 1: and Melissa's house when they're out doing their thing. They're
14:41
Speaker 1: preening and they're cleaning their feathers and they're flapping, ruffling
14:45
Speaker 1: their feathers around and flapping around, and they take a
14:48
Speaker 1: little dust bass, which means they roll around on the ground,
14:51
Speaker 1: and uh, they're absorbing oil for their feathers, and they're
14:55
Speaker 1: getting rid of their dead skin and their shedding feathers
14:58
Speaker 1: that they don't need, and little feather mites, and they
15:01
Speaker 1: love to nest. And then here's the big one is
15:05
Speaker 1: And I've seen it happen and I've tried to guard
15:07
Speaker 1: my eyes because I know what's going on. They don't
15:10
Speaker 1: like a lot of attention when they're laying these eggs.
15:13
Speaker 1: It's a they're giving birth. It's a private matter to them,
15:18
Speaker 1: you know, giving birth in the figurative sense. But it's uh,
15:23
Speaker 1: it's like they're doing their business. They don't want a
15:25
Speaker 1: lot of attention. They'd like to do this instinctively in private,
15:29
Speaker 1: and they're not able to do that there. It's called
15:32
Speaker 1: the laying act and it's on full display. And they
15:35
Speaker 1: can get so upset about having to do this without
15:39
Speaker 1: any privacy in battery cages, not can they do. They
15:43
Speaker 1: get so upset they peck at other hens and they
15:47
Speaker 1: fight each other. And that's why they end up clipping
15:49
Speaker 1: their beaks because the other hens are getting injured from
15:53
Speaker 1: being henpecked because they're stressed out from living on an iPad. Yeah.
15:57
Speaker 1: Dr con Conrad Lorenz Or Lawrence Um, who starred in
16:02
Speaker 1: our Animal Imprinting episode, I think he's popped up elsewhere.
16:06
Speaker 1: He had a quote he said, the worst torture to
16:08
Speaker 1: which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to
16:11
Speaker 1: retire somewhere for the laying act. The person who knows
16:14
Speaker 1: something about animals. It is truly heartrending to watch how
16:18
Speaker 1: a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her
16:20
Speaker 1: fellow cage mates to search their in vain for cover
16:23
Speaker 1: because they don't get what's going on too. It's it is,
16:26
Speaker 1: it's heartbreaking. Yeah, So, like that is an enormous thing.
16:29
Speaker 1: Like not only are we forcing them to have more
16:33
Speaker 1: eggs every year, we're forcing them to do it against
16:36
Speaker 1: their instinct basically every day, and they really suffer tremendous
16:40
Speaker 1: amount of distress for that. And then one of the
16:43
Speaker 1: other ones, one of the other behaviors that's really really
16:45
Speaker 1: big is roaming, their freedom to roam. Chickens are very
16:50
Speaker 1: social animals. They like to hang out, they like to
16:52
Speaker 1: mess with each other, like to pren one another, not
16:54
Speaker 1: to supreme themselves, um, but they also need space to
16:58
Speaker 1: get away from one another there and when they can't
17:01
Speaker 1: do that, that's when things like hen pecking to uh
17:03
Speaker 1: to an injurious degree, or cannibalism we're all sorts of um.
17:08
Speaker 1: Terrible zookosis can happen when chickens are stuck together in
17:12
Speaker 1: a very small area for their entire lives, and that
17:15
Speaker 1: is the basis of battery cages. And you said, it's like,
17:20
Speaker 1: like it makes sense from a mechanized industrial standpoint. But
17:25
Speaker 1: back in the day when when when they figured this out.
17:28
Speaker 1: These are the same people who resisted putting seatbelts and
17:30
Speaker 1: cars and got us into Vietnam, you know what I mean? Like,
17:33
Speaker 1: these aren't exactly the most moralistic generation that we've ever produced.
17:38
Speaker 1: They were very sensible and like rational minded and didn't
17:42
Speaker 1: take a great deal of humanity into consideration when it
17:45
Speaker 1: came to profit maximization. Yes, this is a segment we
17:48
Speaker 1: like to call Gen X speaks to millennials and Gen
17:52
Speaker 1: Z about boomers. That's right, you got that straight. But
17:57
Speaker 1: it's true. They also you know, alter their UH diet
18:01
Speaker 1: and lighting to UH to maximize their output. They don't
18:06
Speaker 1: move around, so they're obviously you know what's gonna happen
18:09
Speaker 1: when an animal is just sort of stuck in the small,
18:11
Speaker 1: tiny thing, They're gonna have no muscle. They have muscle
18:14
Speaker 1: loss because they can't move around and do their thing,
18:17
Speaker 1: and they basically become what I described, which is these
18:21
Speaker 1: living egg laying machines, which is exactly how the industrial
18:25
Speaker 1: egg complex, if that's a term wants it. But things
18:30
Speaker 1: are changing a little bit, and we're gonna walk you
18:34
Speaker 1: through some of you know, a lot of these are
18:36
Speaker 1: marketing terms, but some of them are legitimate um terms
18:41
Speaker 1: that the USDA allows them to use. Uh, in addition
18:45
Speaker 1: to these great pictures that you see on your egg
18:47
Speaker 1: cartons of chickens, like, you know, smiling under the sunshine
18:50
Speaker 1: on a rolling pastoral scene. Uh, they're allowed to do
18:54
Speaker 1: stuff like that, but the words that they use are
18:58
Speaker 1: regulated to an extent. And if you really, really really
19:03
Speaker 1: want to do your due diligence, though, you've got to
19:06
Speaker 1: know what all this stuff means and then even do
19:08
Speaker 1: a little more investigation. Yeah, typical U. S d A
19:12
Speaker 1: type stuff. But let's take a break and then we'll
19:13
Speaker 1: get into cage free. How about that, Let's get out
19:16
Speaker 1: of the cage. If you want to know, then you're
19:19
Speaker 1: in luck. Just chuck. Okay, So we're talking cage free,
19:44
Speaker 1: and I think I already let the cat out of
19:46
Speaker 1: the bag, although hopefully not in the chicken cooper um
19:51
Speaker 1: that cage free actually does have some meaning like actually,
19:55
Speaker 1: if you if you look at it compared to the
19:57
Speaker 1: battery cage operations of your or actually I shouldn't say,
20:00
Speaker 1: of yours are still most chickens in the United States,
20:03
Speaker 1: at least they're still in battery cages. I think something
20:06
Speaker 1: like se which amounts to two and thirty million hens
20:11
Speaker 1: are currently in battery cages. Um, so it's still going on,
20:16
Speaker 1: still happening. But if you if you compare the battery
20:18
Speaker 1: cage to the cage free operation, it is a substantial difference,
20:23
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, Like the more we describe this stuff,
20:26
Speaker 1: there are levels of getting better, for sure. Uh in
20:29
Speaker 1: cage free is better. Uh, it is greater than it means.
20:33
Speaker 1: And this is a direct quote from the U. S
20:35
Speaker 1: d A means the eggs must be produced by hens
20:40
Speaker 1: housed in a way that allows for not only unlimited
20:42
Speaker 1: access to food and water. And you might think, well, duh,
20:46
Speaker 1: but they used to like keep food from hens. Uh,
20:50
Speaker 1: so different things would happen with their production and they're like,
20:53
Speaker 1: you can't do that at all anymore, and then the
20:56
Speaker 1: rest of it goes. But unlike eggs from caged hens
21:00
Speaker 1: also provides them freedom to roam during the laying cycle.
21:04
Speaker 1: That's huge. But here's the deal is, they are there
21:07
Speaker 1: aren't any guidelines about what that access to outdoors means uh,
21:12
Speaker 1: it doesn't say how much space there needs to be,
21:15
Speaker 1: And so basically what you're still seeing is a big,
21:19
Speaker 1: long barn with a bunch of laying hens packed inside there.
21:23
Speaker 1: They're just not in those wire cages. No, they have
21:26
Speaker 1: now instead of about an eight by eight square of
21:30
Speaker 1: space available to them like they do in the battery cages,
21:33
Speaker 1: typically a hand in a free or cage free situation
21:37
Speaker 1: has about ten and a half inch by eleven inch
21:41
Speaker 1: space available to them per bird, And it's not like
21:44
Speaker 1: it's designated. That's what they can move around. At least
21:46
Speaker 1: they can move around these giant, giant barns. The problem
21:49
Speaker 1: is that there's tens of thousands of hens also in
21:53
Speaker 1: these barns, and they just don't have that much room
21:56
Speaker 1: to move. If they had a ton of willpower and
21:58
Speaker 1: they decided they were going to go to point B,
22:00
Speaker 1: they could conceivably make their way there. But it's not
22:03
Speaker 1: going to be easy and it's not like they're just
22:05
Speaker 1: roaming around and they have a bunch of free space
22:08
Speaker 1: to move around in or do much in. Again, compared
22:12
Speaker 1: to the battery cages, where they had no chance of
22:14
Speaker 1: moving away from their little cage, it is a huge improvement.
22:19
Speaker 1: But then when you see a picture of what a
22:22
Speaker 1: cage free barn looks like, it's it gets a little
22:26
Speaker 1: depressing again. Yeah, and you know some of these egg
22:30
Speaker 1: producers are not the hens, but the operations. Obviously there's
22:35
Speaker 1: only one egg producer in the scenario. Um. They do
22:38
Speaker 1: have some perches that are built up, and they do
22:41
Speaker 1: have some nesting areas so they can hop up there.
22:44
Speaker 1: They can stretch their wings, but they're not required to.
22:47
Speaker 1: That's not part of the U s d A requirement.
22:50
Speaker 1: If you want to look for requirements that you could
22:53
Speaker 1: look for a label from the United Egg Producers. They
22:56
Speaker 1: have a different certification guideline for cage free that's a
23:00
Speaker 1: little more um, I guess open than the U s
23:02
Speaker 1: d A s are restrictive. I guess if you're a farmer. Uh.
23:06
Speaker 1: They must allow hens to exhibit natural behaviors that we
23:09
Speaker 1: talked about and include enrichments such as scratch areas, purchase,
23:13
Speaker 1: and nests, so they have to have those, and then
23:16
Speaker 1: they must have access to litter. And litter is just
23:19
Speaker 1: like the stuff on the ground that they like to
23:21
Speaker 1: roll around in. It's not like beer, canson, old batteries
23:25
Speaker 1: and stuff nothing crying ironized cody kind of. Uh. They
23:30
Speaker 1: must have protection from predators and be able to move
23:33
Speaker 1: through a barn in a manner that promote that promotes
23:36
Speaker 1: bird welfare. So that's a little hazy, but that generally
23:41
Speaker 1: means not as crowded. But I don't think that that
23:45
Speaker 1: even specifies what that means. No, And and that is
23:48
Speaker 1: much better than the U. S d A standards. And
23:51
Speaker 1: the United Egg Producers are an industry industry group of
23:55
Speaker 1: like agg operators, Like I think there's maybe a hundred
23:58
Speaker 1: and fifty in the in the United States, which is
24:02
Speaker 1: way less than there used to be almost all the eggs, right, yes, yeah,
24:07
Speaker 1: and we explored a lot of them too. Um. Surprisingly
24:10
Speaker 1: Uh so it's a it's a car, it's a cartel,
24:14
Speaker 1: a lot like a salabbying group basically for the egg producers. Um.
24:19
Speaker 1: And you know, at at the risk of sounding like
24:22
Speaker 1: suspicious of them, like I would guess that they created
24:25
Speaker 1: these standards to get ahead of this problem that was
24:28
Speaker 1: growing all of a sudden and costing them money. So
24:31
Speaker 1: by doing better than the U. S c A, you know,
24:34
Speaker 1: that's great. Like their hens are are genuinely like um, um,
24:40
Speaker 1: what's the word, what's the opposite of suffering benefiting from that?
24:45
Speaker 1: But it makes me suspect and actually I know from
24:48
Speaker 1: research it can be much better than that, right. And
24:52
Speaker 1: a big one is density. It's a it's a huge
24:54
Speaker 1: part of it. It's density. How like there should be
24:57
Speaker 1: much greater limits on how many hens you can have
25:00
Speaker 1: per barn. And then also another one is even under
25:04
Speaker 1: these um these better more stricter standards for hand welfare,
25:09
Speaker 1: their their lives are very much artificially controlled still because
25:13
Speaker 1: they're kept in this barn. They're still in a barn.
25:16
Speaker 1: They don't go outside to be cage free. You you
25:19
Speaker 1: still don't go outside if your hand. You spend your
25:21
Speaker 1: entire life in one single barn until you stop producing
25:27
Speaker 1: enough eggs fast enough, and then they turn you into
25:29
Speaker 1: pet food. That's right, Uh, sometimes feeding yourself back to
25:34
Speaker 1: your fellow chickens. Uh. I looked a little bit into
25:38
Speaker 1: what chicken feed is mainly made of. And because I
25:40
Speaker 1: remember at the time when I took this tour, someone
25:43
Speaker 1: said something about, you know, there's chicken parts in the
25:46
Speaker 1: chicken feed. Uh. This was someone telling me this. I
25:50
Speaker 1: didn't find that in my research, but there has been
25:55
Speaker 1: a movement away from things like fish meal because fish
25:58
Speaker 1: meal is obviously the oceans are being depleted too, to
26:01
Speaker 1: using fishes to feed chickens isn't a great idea. And
26:04
Speaker 1: I think just a few years ago, um, there was
26:07
Speaker 1: final approval to use uh and it sounds gross, but
26:10
Speaker 1: like fly larva, and you might think, like that's good.
26:14
Speaker 1: That is good because that's what chickens would eat if
26:17
Speaker 1: they were just roaming the countryside, they would eat things
26:19
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, so they're starting to be fed things
26:22
Speaker 1: they normally would would eat otherwise, which is good that
26:26
Speaker 1: their their food is still very much controlled and portioned
26:29
Speaker 1: and everything, but they, um, they're starting to be fed
26:33
Speaker 1: things that more resemble their diet was before it was
26:35
Speaker 1: just whatever was cheapest and most abundant that you could
26:37
Speaker 1: feed a chicken like soy and fish. That's yeah, that's
26:40
Speaker 1: not natural. And you, as the person eating the egg,
26:43
Speaker 1: should be like, I don't want to egg from a
26:46
Speaker 1: chicken that's been eating fish. It's whole life. Chickens don't
26:48
Speaker 1: eat fish. This egg probably tastes way different than it should.
26:53
Speaker 1: And that's another thing too. There's a lot of health
26:55
Speaker 1: benefits that have been documented in eggs that come from
26:59
Speaker 1: well treated chickens. It seems to be that the you
27:02
Speaker 1: treat a chicken, the healthier the egg it produces. Is
27:06
Speaker 1: you can just get a and you know, if you
27:09
Speaker 1: don't have a friend that has a back air chicken,
27:11
Speaker 1: there's probably some local farmers market where some fish fan
27:15
Speaker 1: will sell you their eggs. Uh. And you you need
27:19
Speaker 1: only look at them from the outside at first, to
27:22
Speaker 1: what they look like in the pan, to what they
27:24
Speaker 1: taste like. It is a stark difference. It just is
27:27
Speaker 1: U Yeah, totally. You eat one and you can take
27:29
Speaker 1: on like five cops. Yeah, there's that nutrient. These cage
27:36
Speaker 1: free chickens, whether they're United Egg Producer Standard or just
27:41
Speaker 1: usd A standard, they still have their beaks trimmed when
27:44
Speaker 1: they're ten days old. They're still forced molted. Molten is
27:49
Speaker 1: a natural process, but they do something called force molting
27:52
Speaker 1: when uh and this is where they used to take
27:55
Speaker 1: away their feed entirely to force molting. Now they just
27:59
Speaker 1: withhold some feed to force the molting. It's when they
28:01
Speaker 1: shed those feathers and molts and that extends there their
28:05
Speaker 1: layer life by you know, it's pretty substantial. It can
28:09
Speaker 1: be like forty weeks so that again they're just they're
28:12
Speaker 1: ringing every last egg out of those chickens, k tree
28:16
Speaker 1: or not. I saw that the forced molting is not
28:20
Speaker 1: actually in and of itself harmful, and that it might
28:24
Speaker 1: actually be beneficial for the chickens because they live their
28:26
Speaker 1: life indoors, and one of the ways that they do
28:29
Speaker 1: that is through adjusting the length of the light, the
28:32
Speaker 1: artificial light. But the problem is natural their withholding. No,
28:37
Speaker 1: it's not naturally happening, but it's not going to naturally
28:40
Speaker 1: happen during their lifetime anyway, And it actually is good
28:43
Speaker 1: for them to go through a mold. But they wouldn't
28:45
Speaker 1: without this induced or forced molting because they aren't They
28:50
Speaker 1: aren't subjected to um natural light. They don't get natural light.
28:53
Speaker 1: It's all artificial. They spend their entire lives basically indoors,
28:57
Speaker 1: almost entirely cut off from natural light, if not entirely
29:00
Speaker 1: cut off from it. See I thought hens malt by
29:04
Speaker 1: being a hen. No. No, I think they take their
29:08
Speaker 1: cues from um a shorter duration of days, and then
29:12
Speaker 1: they stop eating quite as much. Then they go through
29:15
Speaker 1: the molting process, stop laying eggs uh as frequently, and
29:19
Speaker 1: then that happens. I'm saying, yes, it does, but it's
29:23
Speaker 1: cued by changes in natural light. And if they're not
29:26
Speaker 1: exposed to natural light, they're not going to undergo the mold,
29:30
Speaker 1: right unless you Yeah, but like justin Melissa's eggs malt
29:37
Speaker 1: because they like it can be the shorter day of
29:41
Speaker 1: the natural light cycle of a year, right right, Yeah,
29:45
Speaker 1: And that's a natural thing. I'm just saying, like they
29:47
Speaker 1: can induce it through artificial light changes an artificial light,
29:50
Speaker 1: and it's not necessarily bad that they induce it artificially.
29:53
Speaker 1: It's probably better than just not doing it at all. Right, Okay,
29:57
Speaker 1: I got you. Okay, I thought you're saying they molt normally. No, no, no,
30:02
Speaker 1: I would never say something like that. Uh, now we
30:06
Speaker 1: can move on. Those are hens that lay eggs. Now
30:09
Speaker 1: we can move on to hens that are raised for meat.
30:13
Speaker 1: They're called broilers, uh in the industry, and um, it's
30:18
Speaker 1: kind of the same deal of American broilers. Chickens never
30:23
Speaker 1: see light in this country. Uh. They are in those
30:26
Speaker 1: from the moment they're born as a little chickie chicks.
30:29
Speaker 1: They are in a barn, and they live about six
30:33
Speaker 1: weeks and they are they are pumped up as fast
30:37
Speaker 1: as they can be pumped up to get the biggest
30:41
Speaker 1: breast meat possible. UM. I think there was, Dave, this
30:45
Speaker 1: is pretty startling. UM day found a calculation that if
30:48
Speaker 1: you if you sort of transferred their growth rate to
30:51
Speaker 1: like what a human baby would look like, Uh, it
30:54
Speaker 1: would be a three forty nine pound baby by their
30:56
Speaker 1: second birthday, like baby huey. Yeah, that's maybe we are right. Yeah.
31:02
Speaker 1: So the the way that they did this is through
31:04
Speaker 1: basically selective breeding UM, selecting chickens that UM grow in
31:10
Speaker 1: their breast area. But they've basically surpassed any any point
31:15
Speaker 1: where you would normally stop because it's now very harmful
31:19
Speaker 1: for the chicken. These chickens that we eat, the broiler
31:23
Speaker 1: chickens UM not necessarily a whole chicken. It can also
31:26
Speaker 1: be like you know, um, like drumsticks or breasts or
31:29
Speaker 1: thighs or whatever, all that comes from a broiler chicken.
31:31
Speaker 1: Any chicken you eat is a broiler chicken. UM. So
31:35
Speaker 1: these broiler chickens are are usually selected for their breasts,
31:38
Speaker 1: and their breasts are so heavy that they can't really
31:40
Speaker 1: walk because their legs aren't developing the way that they should.
31:43
Speaker 1: But then In addition to that, their legs can't develop
31:46
Speaker 1: the way they should because the breast is so heavy,
31:48
Speaker 1: so they end up with metabolic diseases, they end up
31:51
Speaker 1: with muscle atrophy, and they don't do much of anything
31:55
Speaker 1: except eat and rest because that's basically all they have
31:59
Speaker 1: the energy to do. Six weeks is their lifespan. Yeah,
32:02
Speaker 1: they just want to reiterate that. So over the six weeks, Yeah,
32:06
Speaker 1: they go from like chicks to slaughtered adults in six weeks,
32:10
Speaker 1: So they're growing that fast. But they're also growing way
32:12
Speaker 1: bigger than any normal chicken would write, any normal breed.
32:16
Speaker 1: So during that six weeks um, they're stuck in this litter.
32:20
Speaker 1: If they're in a situation where they have litter available
32:23
Speaker 1: to them and they're just pooping and peeing in this litter,
32:27
Speaker 1: and they're not getting up enough to not get like
32:30
Speaker 1: blisters from the ammonia in the litter, it's a it's
32:34
Speaker 1: a problem in and of itself, Like that's how basically
32:37
Speaker 1: obese these these chickens are. That they cannot move much
32:43
Speaker 1: at all, and they end up getting sores from exposure
32:46
Speaker 1: to all the yearine they're they're sitting in. Yeah, this
32:49
Speaker 1: was the hardest part of that tour for me in
32:51
Speaker 1: the one where my buddy Barry and I actually left
32:54
Speaker 1: the building after And I'll go ahead, and we probably
32:57
Speaker 1: should have issued a trigger warning period hopefully the titled
33:00
Speaker 1: episode would scare off any like vegans who really didn't
33:03
Speaker 1: don't even want to hear about this, but trigger warning
33:06
Speaker 1: right here. Uh, one of the you know, and this
33:09
Speaker 1: is what they do when one of the broilers or
33:12
Speaker 1: any of the chickens are are injured or you know,
33:16
Speaker 1: uh winged in some way that isn't uh, I don't know.
33:20
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna put I'm not gonna label what exactly
33:23
Speaker 1: is wrong with the chicken when they pick it up
33:26
Speaker 1: by the neck and sling it in a little circle
33:30
Speaker 1: real quick to snap their neck and then throw it
33:32
Speaker 1: back on the ground. But that's exactly what happened in
33:34
Speaker 1: front of us when we saw a chicken that apparently
33:37
Speaker 1: wasn't doing well. And the guy is literally in mid
33:40
Speaker 1: conversation and I know this is the job that they do,
33:43
Speaker 1: and I don't expect him to hold a funeral. But um,
33:46
Speaker 1: that's when Barry and I stepped out and we're like, uh,
33:48
Speaker 1: we're gonna be out here for the rest of the tour,
33:50
Speaker 1: I can imagine, And yeah, I had five cigarettes at
33:56
Speaker 1: the same time. So there's this um this right, or
34:00
Speaker 1: from the New Yorker named Michael Spencer who went to
34:02
Speaker 1: a poultry farm and he wrote that, um, there must
34:04
Speaker 1: have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor
34:07
Speaker 1: in front of me. They didn't move, they didn't cluck.
34:10
Speaker 1: They were almost like statues of chickens living in nearly
34:13
Speaker 1: total darkness. And they would spend every minute of their
34:16
Speaker 1: six week lives that way. It's pretty sobering. And those
34:19
Speaker 1: are the brothers, those are the ones we eat, right,
34:21
Speaker 1: So um, again, they're bread to to grow this way,
34:25
Speaker 1: and it's totally unnatural. Chickens don't normally get like that.
34:29
Speaker 1: And when they do interact with people, which is not
34:33
Speaker 1: obviously a requirement for a chicken to have a good life,
34:35
Speaker 1: but it's for what you just said. It's to to
34:38
Speaker 1: harvest or kill a sick or just a sick chicken,
34:43
Speaker 1: or get the carcass of a dead chicken out of there.
34:46
Speaker 1: And if you want to see just how little humans,
34:51
Speaker 1: how little of a role humans have in chicken farming today,
34:54
Speaker 1: there's a video that Day found. It's actually like a
34:57
Speaker 1: trade video that I think Ink is kind of like
35:00
Speaker 1: to sell all of these different machines. It's called Inside
35:04
Speaker 1: the Million Dollar Chicken Farm, Amazing Modern Chicks, Poultry Farming
35:09
Speaker 1: check Technology. It's on YouTube and it's like sixteen minutes long.
35:13
Speaker 1: I didn't watch it with the volume, so I don't
35:14
Speaker 1: know if there's narration, but if you watch it on mute,
35:17
Speaker 1: it's just it's mesmerizing. And it's also like, I really
35:22
Speaker 1: hope humans don't end up like this in the next
35:24
Speaker 1: like hundred two hundred years, you know, like it's really
35:28
Speaker 1: really weird and unsettling, but then also at the same
35:31
Speaker 1: time deeply fascinating. Yeah. So the answer then would be
35:36
Speaker 1: free range. That is seemingly the solution. So what does
35:42
Speaker 1: that mean. We talked about cage free and what that means. Uh.
35:46
Speaker 1: For the U s d A, any egg or poultry
35:49
Speaker 1: product that can be classified as free range means the
35:53
Speaker 1: housing for the birds must provide continuous free access to
35:56
Speaker 1: the outside through their normal growing cycle. Uh. And again,
36:00
Speaker 1: this is sort of like that story when the guy
36:02
Speaker 1: said it just means there's a door. They don't go
36:04
Speaker 1: out there because their food and water is in here
36:07
Speaker 1: U S D A D A doesn't say, um, how
36:10
Speaker 1: big this door has to be, where it has to
36:12
Speaker 1: be placed. They don't say they don't require them to
36:17
Speaker 1: go outside, like they don't shuttle them outside every day
36:19
Speaker 1: for some sunlight like you would like in a prison
36:22
Speaker 1: yard or something like that. All that matters is that
36:25
Speaker 1: they have continuous access. That door stays accessible and open.
36:30
Speaker 1: And uh, so you've got your big barn again, you've
36:33
Speaker 1: got your small door, and if they want to go outside,
36:36
Speaker 1: they can. But then even if they do go outside,
36:39
Speaker 1: it doesn't say like and you've got to have this
36:41
Speaker 1: much area for this many chickens to roam around if
36:44
Speaker 1: they want to. It can be anything. It can be
36:47
Speaker 1: a pretty small little area and it still qualifies as outside.
36:51
Speaker 1: So so those huge dark barns with artificial light filled
36:57
Speaker 1: with tens of thousands of chickens, if you popped a
37:01
Speaker 1: hole the size of a bread plate into the wall
37:06
Speaker 1: of that barn, you could call your operation a free
37:10
Speaker 1: range chicken operation. Now that's it to be fair. But uh,
37:15
Speaker 1: technically you're right, yeah, And it's like, yes, it is
37:19
Speaker 1: technical that I'm right, But from from the research and
37:23
Speaker 1: into just how um, how much of a finger the U.
37:26
Speaker 1: S d A has on what constitutes free range and
37:29
Speaker 1: who meets those requirements. It's entirely possible that somebody's just
37:34
Speaker 1: cut a little hole inside of the barn and now
37:36
Speaker 1: is is saying free range and could argue that if
37:38
Speaker 1: an inspector did come out and argued it with them,
37:41
Speaker 1: they would probably the the egg producer would probably win
37:44
Speaker 1: that argument in court, right. I mean, the doors I
37:48
Speaker 1: saw were bigger, and chickens could easily fit, like more
37:51
Speaker 1: than one chicken, like they were sizeable. But again, the
37:54
Speaker 1: whole point is their food and water is inside, and
37:57
Speaker 1: so chickens are generally an especially when they're they're still
38:01
Speaker 1: pretty crowded in there. They're still gonna stay where their
38:04
Speaker 1: food and water is. Generally, it's not like they're saying, hey,
38:07
Speaker 1: we're gonna put the water out. We're gonna have outdoor
38:09
Speaker 1: class today. Guys, we're gonna put the water in the
38:12
Speaker 1: food outside. That will really encourage you to go outside.
38:15
Speaker 1: They don't care if they go outside or not. So um,
38:18
Speaker 1: we should say the EU has much better standards for
38:22
Speaker 1: what constitutes free range. They've been working at free range
38:26
Speaker 1: and cage free stuff since like ninety nine and have
38:29
Speaker 1: really made some big gains since then. Um. But then
38:33
Speaker 1: even in the United States, Chuck, there's plenty of people
38:36
Speaker 1: like Justin Um who are saying, like, no, I actually
38:40
Speaker 1: want my chickens to be free range, like you would
38:43
Speaker 1: think free range actually is. And so there's there's UM.
38:47
Speaker 1: There's another kind of designation called pasture raised, which people
38:52
Speaker 1: tend to use when they're to kind of separate themselves
38:55
Speaker 1: from free range, because I think enough people have picked
38:56
Speaker 1: up on the fact that free range is kind of meaningless,
39:00
Speaker 1: so pasturage seems to be um more more legitimate, or
39:05
Speaker 1: most people who do legitimately raise chickens outdoors would call
39:09
Speaker 1: them pasture raised. So they're like wheeling them around from
39:13
Speaker 1: place to place. They have an enclosure that they can
39:15
Speaker 1: go to and inclement weather, but for the most most
39:18
Speaker 1: of their lives, they're spending their time outdoors, UM doing
39:22
Speaker 1: what chickens do given plenty of space for being chickens,
39:27
Speaker 1: and that's typically pasture raised. Unfortunately, as far as the
39:32
Speaker 1: us d IS can the U s d A is concerned,
39:34
Speaker 1: pasture raised is the same thing as free range. So again,
39:38
Speaker 1: if you have a shed that has all these chickens
39:40
Speaker 1: and you cut a hole on the side. You can
39:42
Speaker 1: now call that pastur raise too if you want, Yeah,
39:45
Speaker 1: you can't. And and if you're saying, well, if you're
39:48
Speaker 1: saying that some places use pastor raged raised or raged,
39:52
Speaker 1: uh would be quite a party. It's like am trax
39:56
Speaker 1: is loosing your pasture? Uh? If you're saying that, um,
39:59
Speaker 1: some farmers are doing it right, smaller operations And when
40:03
Speaker 1: they say past your rays, they mean it. But technically
40:05
Speaker 1: the U S d A D A doesn't make a distinction.
40:08
Speaker 1: What am I to do? That's where you have to,
40:10
Speaker 1: like do your homework. You can't just make if you
40:13
Speaker 1: want to you if you, if you, if it matters
40:16
Speaker 1: to you, you gotta look up this farm and see
40:20
Speaker 1: what they're doing. And a lot of times see smaller
40:22
Speaker 1: farms will say, hey, come on out if you care,
40:25
Speaker 1: and we'll show you our operation because we're proud of it.
40:28
Speaker 1: Like you can. Uh. They generally have websites where you
40:31
Speaker 1: can and it's all there. You know. I think the
40:34
Speaker 1: U S d A even demands, not demands, but requires
40:36
Speaker 1: a H. I demand a U r L. They take
40:39
Speaker 1: their shoe off and bang it on the death. They
40:41
Speaker 1: require a u r L where you can look this
40:44
Speaker 1: stuff up if you want to. Yeah, for sure. Yeah,
40:47
Speaker 1: the U s d is all over that, which is
40:49
Speaker 1: good because I mean, we've got third party certification who
40:52
Speaker 1: you know who could be illegitimate. But I think that
40:55
Speaker 1: like the industry would police third party certifiers because they
40:59
Speaker 1: don't want to like give away their money unnecessarily because
41:02
Speaker 1: getting um, getting things like pasture raised or um free
41:07
Speaker 1: range like these are these are like it's not required.
41:11
Speaker 1: You can opt to have it done to be certified
41:15
Speaker 1: like that, but you're gonna pay for it. So if
41:17
Speaker 1: we had like phony you know, certifiers running around, I
41:21
Speaker 1: guess yeah, the big producers will probably co opted and
41:23
Speaker 1: use it to their gain. But luckily there are some
41:27
Speaker 1: really legitimate third party certifiers. And the one that seems
41:30
Speaker 1: to have bubbled to the top as far as I
41:31
Speaker 1: can tell, is called Humane Farm Animal Care, A fact
41:36
Speaker 1: I think is the way that you say the the abbreviation. Yeah,
41:41
Speaker 1: I think that's a good uh cliffhanger. Okay, Yeah, and
41:45
Speaker 1: let's take our final break and we'll talk about them
41:47
Speaker 1: and uh and generally, how the U s d A
41:50
Speaker 1: determines if it qualifies as K free or free range
41:53
Speaker 1: to begin with. If you want to know, then you're
41:56
Speaker 1: in luck. Just chuck all right. So you mentioned a
42:21
Speaker 1: couple of important things before the break. One is that, um,
42:24
Speaker 1: if you want these certifications, uh, it is an uh
42:28
Speaker 1: like egg grating stuff like that you see like great
42:30
Speaker 1: A eggs. It is a voluntary thing you have to
42:33
Speaker 1: pay for. Uh, so you can you know, you do
42:36
Speaker 1: it so you can put it on your label so
42:37
Speaker 1: you can charge more obviously, Uh. And you know, maybe
42:41
Speaker 1: you care about delivering a higher quality egg. Who knows.
42:44
Speaker 1: But uh, the U s d d A doesn't. Um
42:48
Speaker 1: Like if it's certified organic, they're not out there doing
42:51
Speaker 1: that certification. That is completely done by U s d
42:54
Speaker 1: A approved certification bodies, and those seem to be a
42:58
Speaker 1: little more feet on the ground as far as actually
43:03
Speaker 1: going to farms and looking at them. Uh, the U
43:06
Speaker 1: s d A does not require and and they can't
43:09
Speaker 1: there are too many, you know that. I don't think
43:12
Speaker 1: they even had the staffing to do that if they
43:13
Speaker 1: wanted to to go out and actually photograph arms and
43:16
Speaker 1: check it out. If you want that descriptor and label,
43:21
Speaker 1: you have to send in a detailed written description explaining
43:24
Speaker 1: how it meets the standards along with an affidavit that's
43:27
Speaker 1: signed that it's not false misleading. But that's kind of it.
43:31
Speaker 1: Like that's the all the proof they need. That's so
43:34
Speaker 1: that's for free range. Cage free they take away more seriously,
43:38
Speaker 1: that's where they do have inspectors go out and check
43:41
Speaker 1: so like if it says cage free has been verified
43:44
Speaker 1: that this this meets those cage free standards. So that's
43:47
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. That's another reason why cage free
43:49
Speaker 1: is a big step up. But yeah, free ranges you say, um, yes,
43:54
Speaker 1: my operation is free range under u s d A standards. No,
43:58
Speaker 1: I'm not lying, and the USDA d A says, good enough,
44:01
Speaker 1: you're you can put free range on your labels. Now,
44:04
Speaker 1: yeah they did. Uh. I think they found a study
44:07
Speaker 1: from that Animal Welfare Institute that examined records from the
44:11
Speaker 1: f s I S and they found that only one
44:15
Speaker 1: producer out of a hundred actually submitted photos of the
44:19
Speaker 1: barn showing the access. Like I think eighty three out
44:23
Speaker 1: of the hundred, uh provided evidence, Uh, I guess not
44:28
Speaker 1: photographic evidence, but um affidavits and third party kind of certifications,
44:33
Speaker 1: and then seventeen of them just had zero substantial substantiation
44:37
Speaker 1: at all, and that they dug in a little bit
44:40
Speaker 1: and found in forty four cases they had no detailed
44:44
Speaker 1: written description at all, which is supposedly what's required, But
44:47
Speaker 1: they still got approval from the U. S t A
44:49
Speaker 1: did label their stuff is free range. Yeah, so I
44:52
Speaker 1: don't want to say the words rubber stamp, but it
44:55
Speaker 1: seems like it might be that way for sure. And again,
44:58
Speaker 1: just buy or beware. Free range is synonymous as far
45:01
Speaker 1: as the U. S. D A is concerned with free roaming,
45:04
Speaker 1: pasture fed, pasture grown, pasture raised, and meadow raised. And again,
45:09
Speaker 1: I just want to drive this home. It means that
45:11
Speaker 1: there's a hole in the side of this giant barn
45:13
Speaker 1: filled with tens of thousands of chickens who may or
45:16
Speaker 1: may not be going in or out of that hole
45:18
Speaker 1: on any day or if ever, during their entire lives.
45:21
Speaker 1: And on the other side of that it might just
45:23
Speaker 1: be a concrete pad, is what they're They could be
45:26
Speaker 1: free ranging on like, that's it as far as the
45:28
Speaker 1: USDA is concerned. So we have a long way to
45:30
Speaker 1: go with free range. Um. In particular because chuck like
45:35
Speaker 1: you me and basically anyone listening to this podcast has
45:39
Speaker 1: a totally different conception of what free range means, right.
45:43
Speaker 1: And there was a survey that was done again by
45:45
Speaker 1: the Animal Welfare Institute. They did it in two thousand
45:47
Speaker 1: and fifteen, and they went out to people, just everyday
45:50
Speaker 1: people and said, hey, what do you what do you
45:51
Speaker 1: think free range? Should, shouldn't should um entail? And they
45:56
Speaker 1: came back with some pretty interesting stuff. Yeah. They you know,
45:59
Speaker 1: as would expect, people thought that free range should mean
46:04
Speaker 1: that there's enough space outside for every bird to be
46:06
Speaker 1: out during the day, uh, during daylight hours that they
46:09
Speaker 1: want to be in. Consumers said they thought the outdoor
46:13
Speaker 1: area should be at least partially covered by grass. Like
46:16
Speaker 1: the expectation from consumers is, well, you put a picture
46:20
Speaker 1: on your carton of a hen rolling around, uh this
46:24
Speaker 1: beautiful pastoral scene. So that's kind of what I expect.
46:28
Speaker 1: Or am I just being hoodwinked? And the answer is
46:30
Speaker 1: you're being hoodwinked. Well, to be fair, these are the
46:34
Speaker 1: same people that believe that those barbecue signs where a
46:37
Speaker 1: pig is actually cooking the barbecue, they think that's going
46:42
Speaker 1: on as well. So we got to really kind of
46:44
Speaker 1: keep this in I never understood that one those are
46:48
Speaker 1: so disturbing. It. This is my brother Lou. We we
46:53
Speaker 1: were eating him. Later we had a falling out. Uh um. So,
46:58
Speaker 1: like I said, if you're if is all of this
47:00
Speaker 1: is just frustrating and confusing, all you have to do
47:03
Speaker 1: is do a little legwork, um or you know, obviously
47:07
Speaker 1: go to those local farmers markets because that's where that's
47:10
Speaker 1: where you're really getting into good stuff and talk to them.
47:13
Speaker 1: I guarantee you that fish fan is gonna invite you
47:15
Speaker 1: out to their farm to check out what's going on. Yeah,
47:18
Speaker 1: but you might walk away with more than eggs. You
47:20
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. That's right, it would be a
47:22
Speaker 1: nice trip. So it literally am so Um if you
47:28
Speaker 1: do want to figure out like where to get good
47:32
Speaker 1: eggs or what eggs you can trust and because you
47:35
Speaker 1: it's because you don't trust a fish fan. Um. There
47:38
Speaker 1: are organizations that say, like, let's not get fish fans
47:41
Speaker 1: involved in this at all, let's keep them at bay,
47:44
Speaker 1: and everyone says, yes, agreed, agreed, How can we move
47:46
Speaker 1: forward without the fish? Keep them on the couch where
47:48
Speaker 1: they belong. So again, the humane farm animal care fact Um,
47:54
Speaker 1: they they from what I can tell, at least in
47:57
Speaker 1: the United States, they definitely are yet and they've come
48:01
Speaker 1: up with some definitions um for their certified humane label.
48:05
Speaker 1: So that's the one that certified humane on a like
48:08
Speaker 1: a poultry or some sort of food product. It actually
48:12
Speaker 1: has met some really good standards and they were basically
48:15
Speaker 1: like the U s d a's definition of free range
48:19
Speaker 1: and pasture raised are so terrible, We're just going to
48:23
Speaker 1: create our own definitions, and they did so, they created
48:26
Speaker 1: their own standards, and to to be certified humane free
48:29
Speaker 1: range or certified humane pasture raised, they the producers have
48:34
Speaker 1: to meet those standards and they're good ones. Yeah, they're
48:37
Speaker 1: really good, or you know, comparatively speaking, at least for
48:40
Speaker 1: free range, the hens must be outside for at least
48:43
Speaker 1: six hours a day, weather permitting, obviously, and that that
48:46
Speaker 1: outdoor space must have a minimum of two square feet
48:49
Speaker 1: for every bird. And again that doesn't sound like much
48:52
Speaker 1: and it's not, but the difference between being able to
48:55
Speaker 1: move around freely when you have two square feet per
48:58
Speaker 1: bird and when you have an iPad per bird is
49:01
Speaker 1: pretty huge, Like you can actually move around and it's
49:04
Speaker 1: not just like being at the worst party you've ever
49:06
Speaker 1: been to. Paste Ray's certified humane as even better than that,
49:12
Speaker 1: the hens must be outdoors year round, with mobile or
49:15
Speaker 1: fixed housing where the hens can nest or rest for
49:18
Speaker 1: the night. Get out about whether and they are. They
49:22
Speaker 1: get about a hundred and eight square feet per bird
49:27
Speaker 1: a thousand birds for two point five acres. A bird
49:29
Speaker 1: doesn't even know what to do with that much space. Now,
49:32
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, can I build a wing onto my
49:35
Speaker 1: little in house? That's right, and Chuck. One of the
49:39
Speaker 1: big things that they're doing at HAFAC is UM they
49:43
Speaker 1: employ veterinarians, people with advanced degrees and animal studies. Those
49:49
Speaker 1: are the people that go out and visit these farms
49:52
Speaker 1: to certify them. People who know what they're talking about,
49:54
Speaker 1: people who are not going to be bought off, people
49:56
Speaker 1: with the UM animals welfare in mind, to verify the
50:00
Speaker 1: everybody's meeting these standards before they get that certification. So
50:04
Speaker 1: that's a good one. There are plenty of other ones
50:06
Speaker 1: out there too, But that's UM just based on our
50:09
Speaker 1: research and from what Dave came up with. Two it's like,
50:12
Speaker 1: that's that's a good one to start with. But it's
50:15
Speaker 1: like you said, do your homework. You know, it doesn't
50:17
Speaker 1: take long either. It's not like you've got to invest
50:19
Speaker 1: hours and hours into this chicken research. Like I guarantee you,
50:22
Speaker 1: wherever you live, you can find some pretty good options
50:26
Speaker 1: with you know, fifteen minutes of research online. That's right.
50:32
Speaker 1: So there you have it. We just need to get
50:34
Speaker 1: on the U s c A to increase to to
50:38
Speaker 1: basically say no, they have to spend a certain amount
50:40
Speaker 1: of time outdoors to be free range. And then we'll
50:42
Speaker 1: go from there because the USDA will probably say fifteen
50:44
Speaker 1: minutes to start. Uh. If you want to know more
50:48
Speaker 1: about free range chickens and cage free eggs, there's a
50:53
Speaker 1: lot of stuff out there that you can read, and
50:55
Speaker 1: we hope that you will. And since I said we
50:57
Speaker 1: hope that you will, it's time for a listener mail.
51:02
Speaker 1: That's right. This one is called egg on Chuck's face
51:06
Speaker 1: because I've misspoken a big way on our National Parks episode.
51:09
Speaker 1: When I touted disperse camping wherever you want national parks,
51:13
Speaker 1: I meant I was thinking of national forests. That's where
51:17
Speaker 1: you can do disperse camping wherever you want. And a boy,
51:21
Speaker 1: I said it a bunch, So you can't camp anywhere
51:24
Speaker 1: you want to national parks. Uh, and I feel terrible
51:28
Speaker 1: for that being out there so much that we might
51:29
Speaker 1: even have to edit that. But uh, greetings from your
51:32
Speaker 1: friend and national park ranger. Your episode of National Parks
51:36
Speaker 1: is excellent, and we heard from quite a few park rangers.
51:38
Speaker 1: By the way, I like to address a statement made
51:41
Speaker 1: by Chuck. Some national parks may still allow disperse camping.
51:44
Speaker 1: It's commonly allowed in national forests. Though national parks and
51:48
Speaker 1: national forests are similar but have different missions and are
51:52
Speaker 1: therefore managed differently. National parks tend to regulate recreation a
51:56
Speaker 1: little more strictly. In fact, many national parks now permit
51:59
Speaker 1: systems in play for backpackers. Yeah, that's very, very true,
52:03
Speaker 1: and those who successfully acquire permits even then are often
52:07
Speaker 1: restricted to camping and designated back country campsites. This prevents
52:10
Speaker 1: overcrowding and popular destinations, which lessens the amount of abandoned gear,
52:14
Speaker 1: garbage and food scraps and every left behind by certain visitors.
52:18
Speaker 1: Certain visitors I wanted to address us because they're regulating
52:22
Speaker 1: where people camp and how many people can camp in
52:25
Speaker 1: a certain area may seem extreme to some. Helps preserve
52:28
Speaker 1: the wilderness character and solitude so many visitors are seeking
52:32
Speaker 1: when they visit a national park. Additionally, visitors who disperse
52:36
Speaker 1: camp in a park that requires a designated campsite and
52:39
Speaker 1: or permit may be subject to fines. That's very important
52:43
Speaker 1: for all visitors to research regulations for any park for
52:46
Speaker 1: US or wilderness that they're visiting. Happy hiking and that
52:50
Speaker 1: is uh from our no named park ranger. Park ranger
52:54
Speaker 1: wish to remain anonymous, which is we're always happy to do.
52:57
Speaker 1: Thank you, anonymous park ranger. Happy high king to you
53:00
Speaker 1: as well. That's right. And I even had one park
53:02
Speaker 1: rangers say, don't make fun of our green shorts. Uh.
53:06
Speaker 1: And to be clear, I don't think those shorts of
53:09
Speaker 1: the same color as as trucks really color I was
53:12
Speaker 1: really making fun of. Maybe they are, but I don't.
53:15
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a if you could even
53:17
Speaker 1: make a fabric that color, right, they just kind of
53:22
Speaker 1: appear it doesn't adhere to textiles. Um. Well, thank you
53:27
Speaker 1: very much again, anonymous park ranger, into all the park
53:30
Speaker 1: rangers and everybody who rode into correct Chuck, who, by
53:33
Speaker 1: the way, it took it with a palm, So way
53:35
Speaker 1: we go, Chuck. If you want to get in touch
53:38
Speaker 1: with this via email, like your friendly anonymous park ranger.
53:41
Speaker 1: Did You Can send it to stuff Podcasts at iHeart
53:44
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
53:50
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
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53:56
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