Lexicon of Sustainability: The Story of Egg Marketing

OTHER RELATED TERMS

Cage Free
Chickens that are not kept in cages. This means chick­ens are still con­fined to a barn with lim­ited or no access to out­side. The term “barn-roaming” more accu­rately describes this principle.

Free Range
Outside the United States this term refers to a method of farm­ing where the ani­mals are allowed to roam freely rather than being con­tained in any man­ner. In the United States, USDA reg­u­la­tions apply only to poul­try and indi­cate solely that the ani­mal has been allowed access to the out­side. These reg­u­la­tions do not spec­ify the qual­ity or size of the out­side range nor the dura­tion of time the ani­mal must be allowed access to this space.

Pasture Raised
Animals that have been raised on pas­ture with access to shel­ter. This term is being used by farm­ers who wish to dis­tin­guish them­selves from the indus­tri­al­ized “free-range” term.

Broiler House
Buildings with lit­tle ven­ti­la­tion that serve as con­cen­trated feed lots capa­ble of hold­ing up to ten thou­sand chick­ens at a time.

Naturally Raised
Livestock which was raised with­out the use of growth pro­motants, antibi­otics, under this clas­si­fi­ca­tion ani­mals are allowed to have par­a­sitic med­i­cine, but not given food with ani­mal byprod­ucts to eat.

Battery Cages
Industrial agriculture’s con­fine­ment sys­tem used for egg-laying hens. Floor space for bat­tery cages ranges from 300 cm² per bird and up; the space allo­cated to bat­tery hens has often been described as less than the size of a piece of paper. A typ­i­cal cage is about the size of a fil­ing cab­i­net drawer and holds from 8 to 10 hens. Animal wel­fare sci­en­tists have crit­i­cized bat­tery cages because they do not pro­vide hens with suf­fi­cient space to stand, walk, flap their wings, perch, or make a nest.  It is esti­mated that over 60% of the world’s eggs are pro­duced in such indus­trial systems.