Trying to stay sane despite rapid advances in scientific understanding and technology!

Monday, June 10, 2013

Free range? Think again...



Here is a good article by www.marksdailyapple.com on how free range poultry is often not free range, and in particular how cage free is a particularly insulting label to put on poultry farming.

Americans spend more than $50 Billion on chicken and turkey annually2 so the financial incentive for them to cater to this shifting demand is gigantic. A few independent farms have opted to actually change the way they raise their birds but improving poultry production practices, especially raising poultry outdoors on pasture, raises the labor costs of production dramatically. For this reason many companies have decided to turn to clever marketing techniques to meet the demand for alternatives instead of actually changing the highly profitable CAFO-style system in which their birds are raised. Today, poultry production claims that boast about the superiority of certain brands’ “organic,” “cage free,” “hormone free,” or “free range” poultry can be seen almost everywhere from poultry labels in grocery stores to restaurant menus and even online meat shops’ product descriptions. Tragically, these poultry production claims are often relatively meaningless. They’re designed to paint a picture of what the customer wants to buy without requiring significant changes in the old CAFO (confined animal feeding operations)poultry production model.”

Do you feel manipulated yet?

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