If you’ve ever stood in the supermarket wondering if paying more for chicken that’s free-range, antibiotic-free, with no hormones added, farm-raised, natural, and organic is going to make you healthy, wealthy, and wise, you’re not alone. There is no specific definition for free-range. For sure, it doesn’t mean “running free to forage for grubs and grain on acres of rolling green pastureland.” The USDA generally allows this term if chickens have access to the outdoors for at least part of the day, which could mean a matter of a few minutes, whether that chicken chooses to go outdoors or not. In fact, less than 1% of chickens nationwide are raised free-range. That means not being housed in cages. It doesn’t mean roaming happily in large open areas. Cage-free can mean crammed together in an indoor henhouse and given very little room to breathe and be their naturally born chicken selves. Under USDA regulations, a “natural” product has no artificial ingredients or added color. Most ready-to-cook chicken can be labeled “natural” if processors choose to do so. The label “No Hormones Added” is meaningless because federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones in chicken. “Antibiotic-free” means that the flock was raised without the use of products classified as antibiotics for animal health maintenance, disease prevention, or treatment of disease. This label, too, is meaningless, since all processed chickens in the U.S. must be antibiotic-free. Despite all of the hype and fluff, there is only one label — organic — that guarantees specific standards. Organic chicken means that 100% of the chicken feed was grown without chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and other genetically modified organisms for at least three years.
