Organic? Free range? What do different egg labels mean?

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Deep down, we all want the food that’s healthy, non-toxic and as ethically-prepared as possible. But the growing number of labels that are placed on different products these days can make it difficult to do so. Gluten-free? Organic? Free range? Does it matter?
NPR blogger Anders Kelto feels your pain, so that’s why earlier this week, he consulted with experts on one particular, personal source of angst – eggs whose cartons have been “plastered with terms that all sound pretty wonderful,” including terms like All-Natural, Cage-Free, Free Range, Farm Fresh, Organic, No Hormones and Omega-3.
Kelto starts off by tackling two terms that are essentially meaningless, as it turns out. Despite the fact that Farm Fresh gives the impression that a local farmer collected and delivered the egg, it is purely a marketing tactic with no merits at all, Humane Society vice president and commercial egg production expert Paul Shapiro told NPR. The same is true with All-Natural, as he says that chickens are actually “raised in the least natural conditions imaginable.”
Cage-Free, on the other hand, gives the consumer the impression that the hens producing the eggs are not confined to a cage – and in this case, it means exactly that, Kelto said. Most of the chickens that produce these eggs live in massive industrial barns known as aviaries, and while they have limited space, they are able to walk around, perch and lay their eggs in a nest.
However, Janice Swanson, an animal scientist at Michigan State University, told NPR that while cage-free birds have more feathers and stronger bones than caged hens, there are risks to living in aviaries. Her research indicated that these facilities are likely to have reduced air quality, and the hens’ risk of dying is doubled, from five percent in cages to over 11 percent in cage-free birds. One of the most common causes was being pecked to death by other chickens, she said.
Like Cage-Free, Free Range also means pretty much what you would think it means – the hens are given access to the outdoors, usually through small doors that lead to a screened in porch, according to Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute. However, he claims that the vast majority of birds in these facilities never actually go outside due to “hurricane winds” caused by industrial fans that suck ammonia out of the building.
Other terms are somewhat misleading, Kelto explained. The No Hormones label is akin to putting a notice on a cereal box that it contains “no toxic waste” because it’s illegal to give hormones to poultry in the US. Likewise, Shapiro told NPR that the No Antibiotics label is largely pointless, as antibiotics are rarely used in the egg industry, although meat-producing chickens are often given them in order to increase growth and fend off diseases.
Chickens aren’t vegetarians, so the Vegetarian Diet label likely means that the omnivores are being fed eating corn fortified with amino acids, he said. Omega-3 eggs are those that likely contain higher levels of the acids because the hens producing them have been fed some flaxseed along with their corn.
While there have been reports of fraud associated with the use of the label, the term Organic actually is actually subject to USDA regulation and must come from chickens that are free-range, are not given any feed containing synthetic pesticides, and are given no hormones or antibiotics. Likewise, while the term Certified Humane/Animal Welfare Approved is subjective, the process of producing these eggs is usually audited by a third-party group following a strict series of animal welfare guidelines.
Finally, we come to Pasture-Raised, which Kelto calls “the gold standard” of replicating a chicken’s natural environment and way of life. These birds spend most of their lives outdoors, with large amounts of space and access to a barn, he said. Many are able to dine on worms, insects, grass and corn feed (which may or may not be organic).
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