Free Range Chicken Not So Free

Free or not, I don't eat chickens. I became a vegetarian during junior high school, ate meat during college largely due to an inadequate school cafeteria, and then stopped again once I graduated. (Yes, I did it backwards.) I am currently what's called "ovo-lacto-pesco" meaning the animal stuff I am willing to eat is comprised of eggs, dairy and fish.

I'd like to dwell a moment on the ovo in my ovo-lacto-pesco, particularly those eggs which, like Elsa the beleaguered lion cub, were born free. Or so I thought. When I buy eggs at the hippie-dippie-you-clearly-live-in-California grocery store where I shop, I purchase free range eggs — ostensibly lain by chickens who roam free and happy through majestic fields, dropping eggs thither and yon to be collected at the leisure of their kindly keepers. Like most product pitches that sound too good to be true and thus are, my cursory research into the nature of so-called free range poultry products indicates that animals living under "free range" or "cage free" conditions are actually not much better off than their no-range counterparts. Please, hold the gasps of disbelief.

Basically, instead of putting each bird in its own cage, most free range birds are crowded together into tiny sheds in which they can technically move about, and have a hole in the wall through which a few birds at a time can travel outside into a tiny pen; however, inch for inch they're just as hemmed in as they would be in cages, and their general health and welfare is just as poor. This is clearly a far cry from the gleefully sunbathing chickens portrayed on the front of your garden-variety (or should I say crappy-shed-variety) free range egg carton. But hey — so long as a determined, intrepid chicken could, while obeying the laws of physics, gain temporary access to some modicum of sunlight, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will allow labels such as "free range" and "animal friendly" (not a legal term) to grace the front of the packaging.

"Oh, how misleading!" you say. "I am shocked — shocked — to learn that these mercenary farmers can get away with such dastardly deeds! Will no one think of the chickens?"

Well, you can. There's an ongoing truth in labeling campaign designed to target these types of misleading statements on the food products you consume. Alternately, you can wipe your KFC-grease-covered fingers on your jeans and close this window.

Just be glad I'm not posting pictures.