Free-range chickens being fed outdoors.

Free range is a method of farming husbandry where the animals are allowed to roam freely instead of being contained in any manner. A farm is an area of land including various structures devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food ( Produce, Grains, or Livestock Animal husbandry, also called Animal science, stockbreeding or simple husbandry, is the agricultural practice of breeding The principle is to allow the animals as much freedom as possible, to live out their instinctual behaviours in a reasonably natural way, regardless of whether or not they are eventually slaughtered for meat. Instinct is the inherent disposition of a living Organism toward a particular Behavior. In practice, there are few regulations imposed on what can be called "free range," and the term may be used misleadingly to imply that the animal product has been produced more humanely than it actually has been. ^[1]

Free range may apply to meat, eggs or dairy farming. The main difference between Free range and factory farmed eggs is that the birds are permitted to roam freely within the farmyard and only kept in Sheds or Henhouses

In ranching, free-range livestock are permitted to roam without being fenced in, as opposed to fenced-in pastures. A ranch is an area of landscape including various structures given primarily to the practice of ranching the practice of raising grazing livestock such as Cattle Pasture is land with Herbaceous vegetation cover used for grazing of Ungulate Livestock as part of a Farm or Ranch. In many of the agriculture based economies, free-range livestock are quite common. Some animals like the goat will only thrive on a free-range diet. The domestic goat ( Capra aegagrus hircus) is a subspecies of goat Domesticated from the Wild goat of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe

Salmonella infection rates in free-range and organic chickens have been found to be comparable to those produced in typical poultry production houses. Salmonella is a Genus of rod-shaped Gram-negative enterobacteria that causes Typhoid fever, Paratyphoid fever Organic farming is a form of agriculture that relies on Crop rotation, Green manure, Compost, Biological pest control, and mechanical Cultivation ^[2]

United States

Traditional American usage equates "free-range" with "unfenced," and with the implication that there was no herdsman keeping them together or managing them in any way. Legally, a free-range jurisdiction allowed livestock (perhaps only of a few named species) to run free, and the owner was not liable for any damage they caused. In such jurisdictions, people who wished to avoid damage by livestock had to fence them out; in others, the owners had to fence them in. ^[3]

In recent years, with the days of free-range cattle mostly in the past, neither the presence of a "legal fence" surrounding the farm nor the pros and cons of old-time free-range ranching are the main points of interest. Instead, the term "free range" is used colloquially to mean something on the order of, "low stocking density," "pasture-raised," "grass-fed," "old-fashioned," "humanely raised," etc. In poultrykeeping, "Free range" is widely confused with yarding, which means keeping poultry in fenced yards. In Poultry keeping yarding is the practice of providing the poultry with a fenced yard in addition to a poultry house. In reality, the two methods have little in common.

Free range meat chickens seek shade on a U. S. farm

The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that chickens raised for their meat have access to the outdoors in order to receive the free-range certification. The chicken ( Gallus gallus, sometimes G gallus domesticus) is a domesticated Fowl which is traditionally believed to have descended from Free-range chicken eggs, however, have no legal definition in the United States. Likewise, free-range egg producers have no common standard on what the term means. Many egg farmers sell their eggs as free range merely because their cages are two or three inches above average size, or because there is a window in the shed.

The USDA has no specific definition for "free-range" beef, pork, and other non-poultry products. Beef is the Culinary name for Meat from Bovines especially domestic Cattle (cows Pork' is the Culinary name for Meat from the domestic Pig ( Sus scrofa) often specifically the fresh meat but can be used as an all-inclusive All USDA definitions of "free-range" refer specifically to poultry. ^[4] No other criteria-such as the size of the range or the amount of space given to each animal-are required before beef, lamb, and pork can be called "free-range". Claims and labeling using "free range" are therefore unregulated. The USDA relies "upon producer testimonials to support the accuracy of these claims. "

In a December 30, 2002 Federal Register notice and request for comments (67 Fed. The Federal Register (since March 14, 1936) abbreviated Fed Reg Reg. 79552), USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service proposed "minimum requirements for livestock and meat industry production/marketing claims" ^[5]. Many industry claim categories are included in the notice, including breed claims, antibiotic claims, and grain fed claims. "Free Range, Free Roaming, or Pasture Raised" would be defined as "livestock that have had continuous and unconfined access to pasture throughout their life cycle" with an exception for swine ("continuous access to pasture for at least 80% of their production cycle"). This proposed rulemaking is still in play. In a May 12, 2006 Federal Register notice (71 Fed. Reg. 27662), the agency presented a summary and its responses to comments received in the 2002 notice, but only for the category "grass (forage) fed" which the agency stated was to be a category separate from "free range" ^[6]. Comments received for other categories, including "free range," are to be published in future Federal Register editions.

The broadness of "free range" in the U. S. has caused some people to look for alternative terms. "Pastured poultry" is a term promoted by farmer/author Joel Salatin for broiler chickens raised on grass pasture for all of their lives except for the initial brooding period. Pastured poultry is a Sustainable agriculture technique that calls for the raising of laying chickens meat chickens (broilers and/or turkeys on Pasture, as opposed Joel F Salatin (born 1957) is an American Farmer, lecturer and Author of several books including You Can Farm and Salad Bar The Pastured Poultry concept is promoted by the American Pastured Poultry Producers' Association (APPPA) ^[7], an organization of farmers raising their poultry using Salatin's principles.

Alternative terminology can be used to make high-density confinement sound more palatable. For example: cage-free, free-running, free-roaming, naturally nested, etc. are used as an alternative to the technical term, high-density floor confinement. Whether high-density floor confinement is more humane than high-density cage confinement is arguable, but in any event high-density confinement (of whatever type) is the antithesis of free range.

European Union

The European Union regulates marketing standards for egg farming which specifies the following (cumulative) minimum conditions for Free range method:

• hens have continuous daytime access to open-air runs, except in the case of temporary restrictions imposed by veterinary authorities,
• the open-air runs to which hens have access is mainly covered with vegetation and not used for other purposes except for orchards, woodland and livestock grazing if the latter is authorised by the competent authorities,
• the open-air runs must at least satisfy the conditions specified in Article 4(1)(3)(b)(ii) of Directive 1999/74/EC whereby the maximum stocking density is not greater than 2 500 hens per hectare of ground available to the hens or one hen per 4m² at all times and the runs are not extending beyond a radius of 150 m from the nearest pophole of the building; an extension of up to 350 m from the nearest pophole of the building is permissible provided that a sufficient number of shelters and drinking troughs within the meaning of that provision are evenly distributed throughout the whole open-air run with at least four shelters per hectare. The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in ^[8]

Otherwise, egg farming in EU is classified into 4 categories: Organic (ecological), Free range, Barn, and Cages, each category being more progressive (in sense of animals' well-being and consequent egg quality^[9]) than the next. The mandatory labeling on the egg shells attributes a number (which is the first digit on the label) to each of these categories: 0 for Organic, 1 for Free range, 2 for Barn and 3 for Cages. ^[10]

United Kingdom

In the UK, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says that a free-range chicken must have daytime access to open-air runs during at least half of their life. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs ( Defra) is the United Kingdom government department responsible for environmental protection Unlike in the United States, this definition also applies to eggs.

See also

• Free range eggs
• Ethical consumerism
• Grass fed beef

References