Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Selects: The Truth Behind Cage-Free and Free-Range About this episode You’d think terms like cage-free and free-range means the chickens we eat are frolicking happily in the fresh air under the shining sun, but you’d be so, so wrong. Cage-free is a huge improvement but free-range is lacking and both have a long way to go. Find out all about both in this classic episode.
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1:42 Josh Clark? Hey, everyone. It's me, Josh, and for this week's select, I've chosen our episode on free range and cage-free. What do they mean? Do they mean anything? Turns out they do mean something, but not what you'd think. This is starting to get kind of tough to follow, so I say just listen to the episode. But this one changed my mind about a lot of stuff, and I hope it opens your eyes, too.
2:08 Speaker 03 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
2:17 Josh Clark? Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just
2:23 Josh Clark? something is going on with Chuck. I'm okay so far, but Jerry's not here because she turned into the chicken lady and is in treatment for that.
2:34 Speaker 02 Doing the chicken dance.
2:35 Josh Clark? Do you remember the chicken lady from Kids in the Hall?
2:38 Speaker 02 Oh, sure. I was referencing Arrested Development.
2:43 Josh Clark? Ca-ca-ca, ca-ca-ca.
2:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, but you're taking it back even further to the great, great Kids in the Hall.
2:49 Josh Clark? That's right. I can just sit here and quote Kids in the Hall one-liners all day.
2:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, I love those guys.
2:56 Josh Clark? So that's not what we're here to do though Chuck. Settle down, settle down. We're going away from the Kids in the Hall.
3:04 Speaker 02 Yes, and since you mentioned that, what we're also not here to do is shame anybody or make anyone feel bad, or to tell anyone how to live their life and eat their breakfast. But we're here to arm you with information on this one about, and I'm not surprised you picked this one, but I just thought since I had a somewhat scarring experience
3:28 Josh Clark? Oh, no.
3:29 Speaker 02 in the commercial chicken farming industry as a job.
3:32 Josh Clark? For sure.
3:32 Speaker 02 For those of you listening that don't know this, one of my last real person jobs before this job, many years ago, was I worked for a software company that designed software for commercial chicken
3:46 Speaker 02 operations to better track how they lay eggs and how they gain weight and how you're feeding them and kind of everything, how they're killed. And I hated that job. It was soul killing and I never understood it. I never invested in it and as far as understanding the software, and I was in tech support and so I was terrible at it. But my friends ran the company and eventually they fired me because I was so bad at it.
4:13 Josh Clark? Wow.
4:13 Speaker 02 And that's the best thing that ever happened to me because that led directly to getting this job.
4:18 Josh Clark? It's like Garth Brooks said, "Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers."
4:25 Speaker 02 All right, sure.
4:26 Josh Clark? You know,
4:27 Speaker 02 Maybe.
4:27 Josh Clark? Your prayer to be good at your chicken killing software job was unanswered and instead an even better prayer that you didn't even know you had was answered.
4:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I didn't have that prayer. I didn't want to be good at that job.
4:40 Josh Clark? But yeah, so this is like, all this is probably pretty well-known to you because this, we've been doing this kind of stuff to chickens for a good 70 years by now, right?
4:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, you know, we're gonna talk some about factory farming finally. We've, I don't think we've dodged it, but people have, you know, long said, hey, guys, can you get into this? And, you know, we're not touching cattle or swine. We're just starting, dipping our toe into it with poultry.
5:09 Josh Clark? Dipping our beaks.
5:11 Speaker 02 Dipping our beaks, our untrimmed beaks.
5:14 Josh Clark? Yeah, I can peck you till the cows come home, which is something that happens on the farm.
5:20 Speaker 02 That's right.
5:21 Josh Clark? So let's, enough dancing around Chuck. We're talking about today, not necessarily factory farming, although, like you said, we have to talk about it. We're gonna talk about those labels that you see on your eggs or on your chicken, usually cage-free or free-range or something along those lines, and whether it means anything. But one of the great successes of the last probably five, six, maybe even 10 years or longer, came very quietly out of the effective altruism community, Chuck.
5:57 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
5:58 Josh Clark? Yeah, a group of effective altruists said, you know, we're always looking to maximize our charitable contributions. There's a lot of chickens out there that are not being treated very well. Supposedly, there's 7.6 billion egg-laying hens alone worldwide at any given time, almost 8 billion. So if you could improve the lives of them even by a little bit, you would really be reducing a massive amount of suffering. So they got $3 million together and like laser focused it on advocacy, lobbying, getting legislation put through. And then most of all pressuring really, really big companies.
6:38 Josh Clark? They went after some whales to to commit to going 100% cage free eggs within a very short period of time, sometimes 2024, sometimes 2030. But all of these huge companies, everybody from Danone to Burger King, to McDonald's, to Whole Foods, not surprisingly, but also like Dollar General. All of them have signed a pledge that says all of the eggs that our customers buy, whether it's in prepared food or eggs you buy in the store, are going to be 100% cage free eggs within the next few years. And they did it with like $3 million and a lot of elbow grease.
7:18 Speaker 02 I love it. I think all those companies probably said, all right, all right. If they're, geez, if they're cage free eggs out there, we'll use them. Stop hassling me.
7:26 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's what the Burger King said.
7:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, the guy in that big, big costume.
7:32 Josh Clark? He said it with his mind.
7:34 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah, because his mouth doesn't move.
7:37 Josh Clark? But it was a big deal. I mean, the fact that they got that, that that's happening. It's a big deal and one, it's one of those things where if you scratch beneath the surface, it's not an intended pun. But if you scratch beneath the surface that a lot of these terms and phrases that the USDA likes to bandy about, things like cage free and things like free range and stuff like that, it's often really disappointing. But that's one of the things about cage free is that it is an actual substantial increase in the welfare and quality of life for egg laying chickens in the, in the United States. It's a big, big deal.
8:15 Speaker 02 It is.
8:16 Josh Clark? And it's not that they're, they're, they're in these amazing conditions all of a sudden with cage free. It's that they're in such poor conditions otherwise that this is a huge improvement for them.
8:28 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of people will agree even cage free isn't all it's cracked up to be. Um.
8:36 Josh Clark? Man, there's a lot of like chicken based idioms that we use. There's suddenly coming to the fore. I hadn't noticed.
8:43 Speaker 02 Uh, when I worked with that company, they made everybody at one point, even if you didn't do like project management where you had to go to the farms, they made us all go to the farms and tech support at one point. And I know I've told this story before, but it was a pretty awful experience. And it smells really, really bad. It smells so bad that me and my one friend that I worked with Barry wore like, did sort of the Silence of the Lambs trick with dabbing some like menthol on our upper lip, under our nostrils, just so we could walk through these things. Uh, and it, you know, I think they thought it would benefit us to sort of just see boots on the ground, what happened.
9:23 Speaker 02 It, I appreciate the field trip, but it did not benefit me in any way, except hearing things like, oh, man, cage or a free range just means there's a door open. They don't even use it. And I heard this back then. I was like, oh my gosh, is that true? And as it turns out, as we'll see, that's kind of true.
9:40 Josh Clark? Yeah. And we shouldn't confuse free range with cage free. They're two different things. We'll describe them both. But yeah, so cage free is a huge improvement. Free range is as bad as you'd expect it to be. Basically because it's coming from the USDA.
9:54 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I guess let's talk about, um, let's briefly, and big thanks to Dave Ruse for helping us out with this one. But, uh, Dave starts out with a little bit of history and I think that's a good place to start. Because you don't have to look very far back in this country.
10:09 Speaker 02 It seems like a long time ago, but the 1940s isn't that long ago in the, in the lifespan of America. And back then they were still like feeding America their eggs. Uh, or its eggs. I don't even know what America is. Um, with backyard chickens, basically. Um, they were big farms, of course. But they weren't like these big massive battery cages that we see today. They were hens living outdoors generally on farms, laid about a hundred eggs a year. Uh, and then after a few years, when they quit laying eggs, then they would be used for meat.
10:45 Josh Clark? They'd turn into Sunday dinner.
10:46 Speaker 02 They would. Uh, and these days, starting in like the 50s, things became a little more industrialized and mechanized. And that's when battery cages came into play, which is the wire cage that you might, like if you have friends that have backyard chickens, you probably built them a large coop and within that coop, some battery cages. But if you're a backyard chicken person, you probably have battery cages that are very large for two or three, four chickens.
11:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, these are not the battery cages that they're raised in after farming became industrialized in the 50s. Like these things are, you usually have, I've seen anywhere between three and seven chickens in there. And usually each one has about the amount of space, uh, about a little lower or a little smaller than the size of a standard piece of paper. And for the, the teenage listeners out there, it's smaller than the size, or about the size of an iPad.
11:43 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah. That's for a chicken.
11:46 Josh Clark? A chicken. They can't move around. They can't flap their wings. They can't do a lot of stuff that we'll find out is a, is a big problem in a minute. They're meant to be kept basically in one place. And because this stuff has all been industrialized, their whole job and everything about their life is to just sit there and lay egg after egg after egg. So they're kept in these battery cages. The battery cages are kept off the ground, which is good because it means that they're away from parasites and
12:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:16 Josh Clark? poop borne diseases.
12:17 Speaker 02 And the eggs are.
12:18 Josh Clark? Yeah. They, when they poop, they, they, it falls onto a conveyor belt that carries the poop away. So it's a little more sanitary. When they lay an egg, the bottom of the cage is slanted downward. So it rolls downward onto a different conveyor belt, thankfully, that whisks the egg away. So the whole thing is really automated. And because these cages are so uniform, they can be stacked. It's modular, so you can go upward with chickens as well as outward, too. You can really raise a lot of chickens in these battery cages, which is good if you're a farmer, not really good if you're a chicken, though.
12:54 Speaker 02 Yes, and these chickens, you know, I said that the backyard chickens of your laid about 100 eggs a year. Today's chickens lay closer to 300 eggs a year because they are bred specifically to do so. And just the way, beyond being bred to do so, like you said, they're set up as such that it's just, you know, they have made it a very efficient operation as far as how much they can extract from each hen.
13:21 Josh Clark? Yeah, that was, real quick, Chuck, that was a big part of the industrialization of farming, too, is breeding practices to where we started selectively breeding types of chickens that either laid a perfectly nice brown egg or ones that gained weight in certain places that we wanted them to. Like genetics has been a huge part of that as well.
13:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, we're really lucky because our really, really good friends, Justin and Melissa, I've known Justin since college, you know Justin.
13:51 Josh Clark? Sure.
13:51 Speaker 02 They have chickens, they have these four beautiful ladies in their backyard.
13:55 Josh Clark? Awesome.
13:56 Speaker 02 And they have a big, wonderful coop. But anytime they're outside and can safeguard them from hawks by keeping an eye on them, those ladies are running around the yard with their dogs. They've somehow managed to train these dogs to kind of give them their space. And it's great, and you know, they give us eggs and we spend money in their wine shop and it's a great symbiotic relationship.
14:20 Josh Clark? That is really great, yeah.
14:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a good, we save our cartons and stuff when we do have to buy eggs. So they have cartons to give out to their friends because these ladies are laying a lot of eggs lately.
14:31 Josh Clark? So Justin has chickens in a wine shop now, he's living the life.
14:36 Speaker 02 I know, man, this is the American dream realized by my British import friend.
14:43 Josh Clark? Well, good. So he's doing it what you could call the right way, I think, which is to say
14:49 Speaker 02 They're very well cared for.
14:50 Josh Clark? Not necessarily the profit maximizing way, but the chickens are, you would guess, much happier than the ones that are in these battery cages. And one of the reasons why we would say the chickens are not so happy in the battery cages is because, like, again, they can't move. If you put a chicken on a piece of paper, it's going to take up most of that piece of paper, or iPad, right? So when you visualize that, you suddenly get like, this is, this is for the whole, for its whole life, usually somewhere around 70 weeks, this is how it spends almost all of that time in this little cage, just laying eggs, laying eggs, at an unnatural pace.
15:31 Josh Clark? And because it's kind of stuck in this, this one small place, there's a lot of things that it can't do that people who have studied chickens say chickens need to do this, or else they're going to go insane and have a really horrific life. And that is kind of what the basis of creating like cage-free setups, or like genuine free-range setups is, it comes from, giving chickens a better life while, during those 70 or so weeks that they're alive.
16:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy for somebody, maybe, who doesn't think about it much, to think of a laying hen as just this sort of organic egg machine, like a living egg machine, not organic in the sense that it's, you know, sort of hard organic, but a living machine that just pumps out these eggs that we love to eat for breakfast, or add on top of a hamburger, or, you know.
16:27 Josh Clark? Or a bowl of Rice Krispies?
16:28 Speaker 02 To a good meal. Ooh, I don't know about that. But that's not the case. Like, these birds have personalities and they have behaviors that they want to do and that they normally do, like, just a handful of them, they love, and, you know, you can see this when I go over to Justin and Melissa's house, when they're out doing their thing, they're preening, and they're cleaning their feathers, and they're flapping, ruffling their Feathers around and flapping around and they take little dust baths, which means they roll around on the ground and they're absorbing oil for their feathers. And they're getting rid of their dead skin and they're shedding feathers that they don't need and little feather mites.
17:07 Speaker 02 And they love to nest. And then here's the big one is, and I've seen it happen and I've tried to guard my eyes. Uh, because I know what's going on. They don't like a lot of attention when they're laying these eggs. It's a, they're giving birth. It's a private matter to them. You know, giving birth in the figurative sense, but it's, uh, it's like they're doing their business. They don't want a lot of attention. They like to do this. Instinctively in private.
17:35 Josh Clark? Yeah.
17:36 Speaker 02 And they're not able to do that. They're, it's called the laying act and it's on full display and they can get so. Upset about having to do this without any privacy in battery cages, not can, they, they do. They get so upset, they, they peck at other hens and they fight each other. And that's why they end up clipping their beaks because the other hens are getting injured from being hen pecked. Because they're stressed out from living on an iPad.
18:03 Josh Clark? Yeah. Dr. Conrad, Conrad Lorenz or Lorenz, um, who starred in our animal imprinting episode. I think he's popped up elsewhere. He had a quote, he said, the worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed. Is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act. For the person who knows something about animals, it is truly heartrending to watch how a chicken tries again and again. To crawl beneath her fellow cage mates to search there in vain for cover.
18:30 Speaker 02 Yeah. Cause they don't get what's going on too. It's, it is, it's heartbreaking.
18:33 Josh Clark? Yeah. So, uh, like that is an enormous thing. Like not only are we forcing them to have 200% more eggs every year. We're forcing them to do it against their instinct, basically every day. And they really suffer a tremendous amount of distress for that. And then one of the other ones, one of the other behaviors that's really, really big is roaming their freedom to roam.
18:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:55 Josh Clark? Chickens are very social animals. They like to hang out. They like to mess with each other. They like to preen one another, not just preen themselves. But they also need space to get away from one another. And when they can't do that, that's when things like hen pecking to an injurious degree, or cannibalism, or all sorts of terrible zoonosis can happen. When chickens are stuck together in a very small area for their entire lives, and that is the basis of battery cages. And you said it's like, like it makes sense from a mechanized industrial standpoint. But back in the day when, when, when they figured this out, these are the same people who resisted putting seatbelts in cars and got us into Vietnam. You know what I mean?
19:40 Josh Clark? Like, these aren't exactly the most moralistic generation that we've ever produced. They were very sensible and like rational minded and didn't take a great deal of humanity into consideration when it came to profit maximization.
19:54 Speaker 02 Yes, this is a segment we like to call, "Gen X Speaks to Millennials and Gen Z About Boomers."
20:01 Josh Clark? That's right. You got that straight.
20:04 Speaker 02 But it's true. They also, you know, alter their diet and lighting to maximize their output. They don't move around, so they're obviously, you know, what's gonna happen when an animal is just sort of stuck in this small, tiny thing? They're gonna have no muscle. They have muscle loss because they can't move around and do their thing. And they, they basically become what I described, which is these living egg-laying machines, which is exactly how the industrial egg complex, if that's a term, wants it. But things are changing a little bit. And we're gonna walk you through some of, you know, a lot of these are marketing terms, but some of them are legitimate terms that the USDA allows them to use.
20:51 Speaker 02 In addition to these great pictures that you see on your egg cartons of chickens like, you know, smiling under the sunshine on a rolling pastoral scene. They're allowed to do stuff like that, but the words that they use are regulated.
21:07 Speaker 02 To an extent, and if you really, really, really want to do your due diligence, though, you gotta know what all this stuff means and then even do a little more investigation.
21:16 Josh Clark? Yeah. Typical USDA-type stuff, but let's take a break and then we'll get into cage free. How about that?
21:22 Speaker 02 Let's get out of the cage.
21:24 Speaker 04 If you wanna know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.
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24:59 Josh Clark? Okay, so we're talking cage-free, and I think I already let the cat out of the bag, although hopefully not in the chicken coop.
25:07 Josh Clark? That cage-free actually does have some meaning. Like, it actually, if you look at it compared to the battery cage operations of yore, or actually, I shouldn't say of yore, there's still, most chickens in the United States, at least, are still in battery cages. I think something like 70%, which amounts to 230 million hens, are currently in battery cages.
25:31 Josh Clark? So it's still going on, it's still happening. But if you compare the battery cage to the cage-free operation, it is a substantial difference, for sure.
25:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, like the more we describe this stuff, there are levels of getting better for sure. Uh, and K tree is better. Uh, it is greater than it means. And this is a direct quote from the USDA. Uh, it means the eggs must be produced by hens, housed in a way that allows for not only unlimited access to food and water. And you might think, well, duh, but they used to like keep food from hens. Uh, so different things would happen with their production and they were like, you can't do that at all anymore.
26:11 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's good.
26:12 Speaker 02 And then the rest of it goes, but unlike eggs from caged hens, also provides them freedom to roam during the laying cycle.
26:20 Josh Clark? That's huge.
26:21 Speaker 02 Uh, but here's the deal is they are, there aren't any guidelines about what that access to outdoors means. Uh, it doesn't say how much space there needs to be. And so basically what you're still seeing is a big, long barn with a bunch of laying hens packed inside there. They're just not in those wire cages.
26:42 Josh Clark? No, they have now, instead of about an eight by eight square of space available to them like they do in the battery cages. Typically a hen in a free or a cage free situation has about a 10 and a half inch by 11 inch space available to them per bird. And it's not like it's designated. That's the point.
27:01 Speaker 02 But they can move around at least.
27:02 Josh Clark? They can move around these giant, giant barns. The problem is, is there's tens of thousands of hens also in these barns and they just don't have that much room to move. If they had a ton of willpower and they decided they were going to go to point B, they could conceivably make their way there. But it's not going to be easy and it's not like they're just roaming around and they have a bunch of, of free space to move around in or do much in. Again, compared to the battery cages where they had no chance of moving away from their little cage. It is a huge improvement, but then when you see a picture of what a cage free barn looks like, it's, it gets a little depressing again.
27:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, and you know, some of these egg producers are not the hens, but the operations. Obviously, there's only one egg producer in this scenario. They do have some perches that are built up and they do have some nesting areas. So they can hop up there, they can stretch their wings, but they're not required to. That's not part of the USDA requirement. If you want to look for requirements, you could look for a label from the United Egg Producers. They have a different certification guideline for cage free that's a little more, I guess, open than the USDA's or restrictive, I guess, if you're a farmer. They must allow hens to exhibit natural behaviors that we talked about,
28:26 Speaker 02 and include enrichments such as scratch areas, perches and nests. So they have to have those. And then they must have access to litter. And litter is just like the stuff on the ground that they like to roll around in. It's not like beer cans and old batteries and stuff.
28:42 Josh Clark? Not the crying, ironized Cody kind of litter.
28:46 Speaker 02 They must have protection from predators and be able to move through a barn in a manner that promotes bird welfare. So that's a little hazy, but that generally means not as crowded. But I don't think that that even specifies what that means.
29:04 Josh Clark? No, and that is much better than the USDA standards. And the United Egg Producers are an industry group of like egg operators. Like, I think there's maybe 150 in the in the United States, which is way less than there used to be.
29:21 Speaker 02 That produce like almost all the eggs, right?
29:23 Josh Clark? Yes, yeah. And we export a lot of them too, surprisingly. So it's a cartel, like a salivating group, basically, for the egg producers.
29:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:35 Josh Clark? And you know, at the risk of sounding like suspicious of them, like I would guess that they created these standards to get ahead of this problem that was growing all of a sudden and costing them money. So by doing better than the USDA, you know, that's great. Like their hens are genuinely like, um, what's the word? What's the opposite of suffering? Benefiting from that.
30:00 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
30:01 Josh Clark? But
30:02 Speaker 02 Thriving.
30:02 Josh Clark? It makes me suspect, and actually I know from research, it can be much better than that.
30:07 Speaker 02 Right.
30:08 Josh Clark? And a big one is density. It's a, it's a huge part of it. It's density. Uh, how like there should be much greater limits on, on how many hens you can have per barn. And then also another one is even under these, um, these better, more stricter standards for hen welfare, their, their lives are very much artificially controlled still because they're kept in this barn. They're still in a barn. They don't go outside. To be cage free, you, you still don't go outside if you're a hen. You spend your entire life in one single barn, uh, until you stop producing enough eggs fast enough and then they turn you into pet food.
30:47 Speaker 02 That's right. Uh, sometimes feeding yourself back to your fellow chickens. Uh, I looked a little bit into what chicken feed is mainly made of. And, cause I remember at the time when I took this tour, someone said something about, you know, there's chicken parts in the chicken feed. Uh, this was a, someone telling me this. I didn't find that in my research, uh, but there has been a movement away from things like fish meal because fish meal is obviously the oceans are being depleted too. So using fishes to feed chickens isn't a great idea.
31:20 Josh Clark? Sure.
31:21 Speaker 02 And I think just a few years ago, um, there was final approval to use, uh, and it sounds gross, but like fly larvae. And you might think like, that's good. That is good because that's what chickens would eat if they were just roaming the countryside. They would eat things like that.
31:36 Josh Clark? Yeah. So they're starting to be fed things they normally would, would eat otherwise, which is good. Their, their food is still very much controlled and portioned. And everything, but they they're starting to be fed things that more resemble their diet. Whereas before it was just whatever was cheapest and most abundant that you could feed a chicken, like soy and fish. That's, yeah, that's not natural. And you, as the person eating the egg, should be like, I don't want an egg from a chicken that's been eating fish its whole life. Chickens don't eat fish. This egg probably tastes way different than it should.
32:09 Speaker 02 Right.
32:10 Josh Clark? And that's another thing, too. There's a lot of health benefits that have been documented in eggs that come from well-treated chickens. It seems to be that the better you treat a chicken, the healthier the egg it produces is.
32:22 Speaker 02 You can just get a, and you know, if you don't have a friend that has a backyard chicken, there's probably some local farmer's market where some fish fan will sell you their eggs.
32:35 Speaker 02 And you need only look at them from the outside at first, to what they look like in the pan, to what they taste like. It is a stark difference. It just is.
32:43 Josh Clark? Yeah, totally. You eat one and you can take on like five cops.
32:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:49 Josh Clark? There's that nutrient then.
32:52 Speaker 02 These cage-free chickens, whether they're United Egg Producer Standard or just USDA Standard, they still have their beaks trimmed when they're 10 days old. They're still forced molted. Moltin' is a natural process, but they do something called forced moltin' when, and this is where they used to take away their feed entirely to forced moltin'. Now they just withhold some feed to force the moltin'. It's when they shed those feathers and molt, and that extends their their layer life by, you know, it's pretty substantial. It can be like 25 to 40 weeks. So again, they're just, they're wringing every last egg out of those chickens, cage-free or not.
33:33 Josh Clark? I saw that the the forced moltin' is not actually in and of itself harmful, and that it might actually be beneficial for the chickens because they live their life indoors. And one of the ways that they do that is through adjusting the the length of the light, the artificial light. But the problem is if they're withholding.
33:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:53 Josh Clark? It didn't, no, it's not naturally. Happening, but it's not going to naturally happen during their lifetime anyway. And it actually is good for them to go through a molt. But they wouldn't without this induced or forced molting. Because they aren't, they aren't subjected to um natural light. They don't get natural light. It's all artificial. They spend their entire lives basically indoors, almost entirely cut off from natural light, if not entirely cut off from it.
34:18 Speaker 02 See, I thought hens molt by being a hen. No?
34:23 Josh Clark? No, I think they take their cues from um a shorter duration of days. And then they stop eating quite as much, then they go through the molting process, stop laying eggs uh as frequently. And then
34:36 Speaker 02 But that happens naturally, though, is what I'm saying.
34:38 Josh Clark? Yes, it does, but it's cued by changes in natural light. And if they're not exposed to natural light, they're not going to undergo the molt.
34:47 Speaker 02 Right.
34:48 Josh Clark? Unless you force it artificially.
34:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. But like Justin Melissa's eggs molt because they like it can be the the shorter day of the natural light cycle of a year.
34:59 Josh Clark? Right, right.
35:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, and that's a natural thing. I'm just saying like they can induce it through artificial light, changes in artificial light. And it's not necessarily bad that they induce it artificially. It's probably better than just not doing it at all.
35:12 Speaker 02 Right, okay, I got you.
35:14 Josh Clark? Okay.
35:15 Speaker 02 I thought you were saying they don't molt normally.
35:18 Josh Clark? No, no, no. I would never say something like that.
35:22 Speaker 02 Now we can move on. Those are hens that lay eggs. Now we can move on to hens that are raised for meat. Uh, they are called broilers uh in the industry and um it's kind of the same deal. Ninety nine percent of American broiler chickens never see light in this country. They are in those from the moment they're born as little chickie chicks. They are in a barn and they live about six weeks and they are
35:52 Speaker 02 They are pumped up as fast as they can be pumped up to get the biggest breast meat possible. I think there was Dave, this is pretty startling. Dave found a calculation that if you, if you sort of transferred their growth rate to like what a human baby would look like, it would be a 349 pound baby by their second birthday.
36:14 Josh Clark? Like baby Huey.
36:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's baby Huey, all right.
36:17 Josh Clark? Yeah. So the, the, the way that they did this is through basically selective breeding, selecting chickens that grow in their breast area, but they've basically surpassed any, any point where you would normally stop because it's now very harmful for the chicken. These chickens that we eat, the broiler chickens, not necessarily a whole chicken, it can also be like, you know, like drumsticks or breasts or thighs or whatever. All that comes from a broiler chicken. Any chicken you eat is a broiler chicken. So these broiler chickens are usually selected for their breasts and their breasts are so heavy that they can't really walk because their legs aren't developing the way that they should. But then in addition
37:00 Josh Clark? to that, their legs can't develop the way they should because the breast is so heavy. So they end up with metabolic diseases. They end up with muscle atrophy and they don't do much of anything except eat and rest because that's basically all they have the energy to do.
37:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, six weeks is their lifespan.
37:18 Josh Clark? Yeah.
37:19 Speaker 02 Again, just want to reiterate that.
37:20 Josh Clark? So over the six weeks, yeah, they go from like chicks to slaughtered adults in six weeks. So they're growing that fast, but they're also growing way bigger than any normal chicken would, right? Any normal breed. So during that six weeks, they're stuck in this litter if they're in a situation where they have litter available to them. And they're just pooping and peeing in this litter and they're not getting up enough to not get like blisters from the ammonia in the litter. It's a, it's a problem in and of itself. Like that's how. Basically obese these chickens are that they cannot move much at all and they end up getting sores from exposure to all the urine they're sitting in.
38:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, this was the hardest part of that tour for me and the one where my buddy Barry and I actually left the building after and I'll go ahead and we probably should have issued a trigger warning period, but hopefully the title of the episode would scare off any like vegans who really don't even want to hear about this, but trigger warning right here. One of the, you know, and this is what they do when one of the broilers or any of the chickens are injured or, you know, winged in some way that isn't, I don't know, I'm not gonna put, I'm not gonna label what exactly is wrong with the chicken when they pick it up by the neck and sling it in a little circle real quick to snap their neck and then
38:48 Speaker 02 throw it back on the ground. But that's exactly what happened in front of us when we saw a chicken that apparently wasn't doing well. And the guy's literally in mid-conversation and I know this is the job that they do and I don't expect him to hold a funeral, but um, that's when Barry and I stepped out and we were like, uh, we're gonna be out here for the rest of the tour.
39:06 Josh Clark? I can imagine.
39:08 Speaker 02 And not in protest.
39:08 Josh Clark? I don't smoke, but I'm about to start.
39:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, I had five cigarettes at the same time.
39:14 Josh Clark? So there's this, um, this writer from the New Yorker named Michael Spencer who went to a poultry farm and he wrote that, um, "There must have been 30,000 chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn't move, they didn't cluck, they were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way."
39:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's pretty sobering.
39:36 Josh Clark? And those are the broilers, those are the ones we eat, right? So, um, again, they're bred to grow this way and it's totally unnatural. Chickens don't normally get like that. And when they do interact with people, which is not obviously a requirement for a chicken to have a good life, but it's for what you just said, it's to harvest or kill a sick or just a sick chicken or get the carcass of a dead chicken out of there. If you want to see just how little humans, how little of a role humans have in chicken farming today, there's a video that Dave found. It's actually like a trade video that I think is kind of like to sell all of these different machines.
40:20 Josh Clark? It's called Inside the Million Dollar Chicken Farm: Amazing Modern Chick's Poultry Farming Technology. It's on YouTube and it's like 16 minutes long. I didn't watch it with the volume, so I don't know if there's narration. But if you watch it on mute, it's just, it's mesmerizing and it's also like, I really hope humans don't end up like this in the next like 100, 200 years, you know? Like, it's really, really weird and unsettling, but then also at the same time deeply fascinating.
40:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, so the answer then would be free range. That is seemingly the solution. So what does that mean? We talked about cage free and what that means. For the USDA, any egg or poultry product that can be classified as free range means the housing for the birds must provide continuous free access to the outside through their normal growing cycle. And again, this is sort of like that story when the guy said, it just means there's a door. They don't go out there because their food and water is in here. USDA doesn't say how big this door has to be, where it has to be placed. They don't say, they don't
41:32 Speaker 02 require them to go outside, like they don't shuttle them outside every day for some sunlight, like you would like in a prison yard or something like that.
41:40 Josh Clark? Right.
41:40 Speaker 02 All that matters is that they have continuous access. That door stays accessible and open. And so you've got your big barn again. You've got your small door. And if they want to go outside, they can, but then even if they do go outside, it doesn't say like, and you gotta have this much area for this many chickens to roam around if they want to. It can be anything. It can be a pretty small little area and it still qualifies as outside.
42:08 Josh Clark? So, so those huge dark barns with artificial light filled with tens of thousands of chickens. If you popped a hole. The size of a bread plate into the wall of that barn, you could call your operation a free range chicken operation now. That's it.
42:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, I didn't see any that small, to be fair, but technically, you're right.
42:33 Josh Clark? Yeah. And like, yes, it is technical that I'm right, but from, from the research into just how, how much of a finger the USDA has on what constitutes free range and who meets those requirements, it's entirely possible that somebody's just cut a little hole inside of the barn and now is, is saying free range and could argue that if an inspector did come out and argued it with them, they would probably, the, the egg producer would probably win that argument in court.
43:03 Speaker 02 Right. I mean, the doors I saw were bigger and chickens could easily fit like more than one chicken. Like they were sizable, but again, the whole point is their food and water is inside.
43:13 Josh Clark? Right.
43:13 Speaker 02 And so chickens are generally, and especially when they're, they're still pretty crowded in there, they're still gonna stay where their food and water is generally. It's not like they're saying, hey, we're gonna put the water out, we're gonna have outdoor class today, guys.
43:26 Josh Clark? Right.
43:27 Speaker 02 We're gonna put the water and the food outside, that'll really encourage you to go outside. They don't care if they go outside or not.
43:34 Josh Clark? So we should say the EU has much better standards for what constitutes free range. They've been working at free range and cage free stuff since like 99 and have really made some big gains since then. But then even in the United States, Chuck, there's plenty of people like Justin, who are saying like, no, I actually want my chickens to be free range like you would think free range actually is. And so there's, there's, there's another kind of designation called pasture raised, which people tend to use when they're, to kind of separate themselves from free range, because I think enough people have picked up on the fact that free range is kind of meaningless.
44:17 Josh Clark? So pasture raised seems to be more legitimate, or most people who do legitimately raise chickens outdoors would call them pasture raised. So they're like wheeling them around from place to place. They have an enclosure that they can go to in inclement weather, but for the most, most of their lives, they're spending their time outdoors, doing what chickens do, given plenty of space for being chickens. And that's typically pasture raised. Unfortunately, as far as the USDA is concerned, pasture raised is the same thing as free range. So again, if you have a shed that has all these chickens and you cut a hole in the side, you can now call that pasture raised too, if you want.
45:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, you can't. And if you're saying, well, if you're saying that some places use pasture raised, raised, or raged, that'd be quite a party.
45:11 Josh Clark? It's like anthrax is loose in your pasture.
45:13 Speaker 02 If you're saying that some farmers are doing it right, smaller operations, and when they say pasture raised, they mean it, but technically the USDA doesn't make a distinction, what am I to do? That's where you have to like do your homework. You can't just make, if you want to, if it matters to you, you gotta look up this farm and see what they're doing. And a lot of times, these smaller farms will say, hey, come on out if you care, and we'll show you our operation, because we're proud of it. Like you can, they generally have websites where you can, and it's all there. You know, I think the USDA even demands, not demands, but requires a, I demand a URL.
45:55 Josh Clark? They take their shoe off and bang it on the desk?
45:57 Speaker 02 They require a URL where you can look this stuff up if you want to.
46:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the USDA is all over that, which is good, because I mean, we've got third-party certification who, you know, who could be illegitimate. But I think that like the industry would police third-party certifiers, because they don't want to like give away their money unnecessarily, because getting, getting things like pasture raised or free range, like these are, these are like. It's not required. You can opt to have it done to be certified like that, but you're going to pay for it.
46:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:34 Josh Clark? If we had like phony, you know, certifiers running around, I guess, yeah, the big producers would probably co-opt it and use it to their gain. But luckily, there are some really legitimate third-party certifiers. And the one that seems to have bubbled to the top, as far as I can tell, is called Humane Farm Animal Care. A F A C, I think is the way that you say the abbreviation.
46:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that's a good cliffhanger.
47:00 Josh Clark? Okay, yeah.
47:02 Speaker 02 And let's take our final break and we'll talk about them and generally how the USDA determines if it qualifies as cage-free or free range to begin with.
47:10 Speaker 04 If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.
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48:31 Josh Clark? Sure.
48:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do, or buy, or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.
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50:02 Josh Clark? These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
50:29 Speaker 02 All right, so you mentioned a couple of important things before the break. One is that if you want these certifications, it is in like egg grading, stuff like that. You see like grade A eggs. It is a voluntary thing you have to pay for. So you can, you know, you do it so you can put it on your label so you can charge more, obviously. And, you know, maybe you care about delivering a higher quality egg, who knows? But the USDA doesn't, like if it's certified organic, they're not out there doing that certification. That is completely done by USDA approved certification bodies. And those seem to be a little more feet on the ground.
51:11 Josh Clark? Yeah.
51:11 Speaker 02 As far as actually going to farms and looking at them. The USDA does not require, and they can't, there are too many. You know, I don't think they even had the staffing to do that if they wanted to, to go out and actually photograph farms and check it out. If you want that descriptor and label, you have to send in a detailed written description explaining how it meets the standards, along with an affidavit that's signed, that it's not false or misleading. But that's kind of it. Like, that's all the proof they need.
51:43 Josh Clark? That's, so that's for free range.
51:46 Speaker 02 Yes.
51:46 Josh Clark? Cage free, they take way more seriously. That's where they do have inspectors go out and check.
51:51 Speaker 02 Right.
51:51 Josh Clark? So like, if it says cage free, it has been verified that this meets those cage free standards. So that's, that's a good thing. That's another reason why cage free is a big step up. But yeah, free ranges, you say, yes, my operation is free range under USDA standards. No, I'm not lying. And the USDA says, good enough. You can put free range on your labels now.
52:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, they did, I think they found a study from that Animal Welfare Institute that examined records from the FSIS. And they found that only one producer out of 100 actually submitted photos of the barn showing.
52:30 Speaker 02 The access like I think eighty three out of the hundred provided evidence. I guess not photographic evidence, but affidavits and third party kind of certifications. And then seventeen of them just had zero substantiation substantiation at all.
52:48 Josh Clark? Yeah.
52:48 Speaker 02 And they dug in a little bit and found in forty four cases. They had no detailed written description at all, which is supposedly what's required.
52:57 Josh Clark? But they still got approval from the USDA to.
52:59 Speaker 02 That's right.
53:00 Josh Clark? Label their stuff as free range.
53:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I don't want to say the words rubber stamp, but it seems like it might be that way.
53:06 Josh Clark? For sure. And again, just buyer beware, free range is synonymous as far as the USDA is concerned with free roaming, pasture fed, pasture grown, pasture raised and meadow raised. And again, just want to drive this home. It means that there's a hole in the side of this giant barn filled with tens of thousands of chickens who may or may not be going in or out of that hole on any day, or if ever during their entire lives. And on the other side of that, it might just be a concrete pad is what they're they could be free ranging on. Like that's it as far as USDA is concerned. So we have a long way to go with free range. In particular, because Chuck, like you, me, and basically anyone listening to this podcast has a totally different conception of what.
53:51 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
53:51 Josh Clark? Free range means, right? And there was a survey that was done again by the Animal Welfare Institute. They did it in two thousand and fifteen. And they went out to people, just everyday people and said, hey, what do you, what do you think free range should should entail? And they came back with some pretty interesting stuff.
54:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, they, you know, as you would expect, sixty five percent of people thought that free range should mean that there's enough space outside for every bird to be out during the day. During daylight hours that they want to be. And sixty two percent of consumers said they thought the outdoor area should be at least partially covered by grass.
54:25 Josh Clark? Right.
54:26 Speaker 02 Like the expectation from consumers is, well, you put a picture on your carton of a hen rolling around this beautiful pastoral scene. So that's kind of what I expect. Or am I just being hoodwinked? And the answer is you're being hoodwinked.
54:42 Josh Clark? Well, to be fair, these are the same people that believe that those barbecue signs where a pig is actually cooking the barbecue. They think that's going on as well, so we gotta really kinda keep this in perspective.
54:56 Speaker 02 I never understood that one. Those are so disturbing.
54:59 Josh Clark? It really is.
55:00 Speaker 02 This is my brother Lou. We're eating him later.
55:04 Josh Clark? We had a falling out.
55:08 Speaker 02 So like I said, if you're, if this, all of this is just frustrating and confusing, all you have to do is do a little legwork.
55:16 Speaker 02 Or, you know, obviously go to those local farmers markets because that's where, that's where you're really getting the good stuff and talk to them. I guarantee you that fish fan is gonna invite you out to their farm to check out what's going on.
55:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, but.
55:28 Speaker 02 You might walk away with more than eggs, you know what I'm saying?
55:30 Josh Clark? That's right.
55:32 Speaker 02 That'd be a nice trip.
55:33 Josh Clark? So, literally, I'm. So, if you do wanna figure out, like, where to get good eggs or what eggs you can trust and because you, it's because you don't trust a fish fan. There are organizations that say like, let's not get fish fans involved in this at all. Let's keep them at bay. And everyone says, yes, agreed, agreed. How can we move forward without the fish?
55:57 Speaker 02 Let's keep them on the couch where they belong.
55:59 Josh Clark? So again, the Humane Farm Animal Care, FAC, they, they, from what I can tell, at least in the United States, they definitely are legit. And they've come up with some definitions for their certified humane label. So if you see certified humane on a, like a poultry or some sort of food product, it actually has met some really good standards.
56:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:24 Josh Clark? And they were basically like, the USDA's definition of free range and pasture raised are so terrible. We're just gonna create our own definitions and they did. So they created their own standards and to, to be certified humane free range or certified humane pasture raised, they, the producers have to meet those standards and they're good ones.
56:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, they're really good. Or, you know, comparatively speaking at least, for free range, the hens must be outside for at least six hours a day, weather permitting, obviously, and that that outdoor space must have a minimum of two square feet for every bird. And again, that doesn't sound like much and it's not, but. The difference between being able to move around freely when you have two square feet per bird and when you have an iPad per bird is pretty huge. Like, you can actually move around and it's not just like being at the worst party you've ever been to. Pasture raised, certified humane. As even better than that, the hens must be outdoors year round with mobile or fixed housing where the hens can nest or rest for the night, get out of bad weather and
57:30 Speaker 02 they are, they get about 108 square feet per bird, 1,000 birds for 2.5 acres.
57:39 Josh Clark? A bird doesn't even know what to do with that much space.
57:42 Speaker 02 No, they're like, hey, can I build a wing onto my little hen house?
57:46 Josh Clark? That's right. And Chuck, one of the big things that they're doing at Hefac is they employ veterinarians, people with advanced degrees in animal studies. Those are the people that go out and visit these farms to certify them. People who know what they're talking about, people who are not going to be bought off, people with the animals welfare in mind to verify that everybody's meeting these standards before they get that certification. So that's a good one. There are plenty of other ones out there too, but that's just based on our research and from what Dave came up with too. It's like, that's, that's a good one to start with, but it's like you said, do your homework, you know?
58:26 Speaker 02 It doesn't take long either. It's not like you gotta invest hours and hours into this chicken research. Like, I guarantee you, wherever you live, you can find some pretty good options with, you know, 15 minutes of research online.
58:39 Josh Clark? That's right.
58:40 Speaker 02 Near you.
58:41 Josh Clark? Yeah. So there you have it. We just need to get on the USDA to increase, to basically say, no, they have to spend a certain amount of time outdoors to be free range. And then we'll go from there because the USDA will probably say 15 minutes to start.
58:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
58:57 Josh Clark? If you want to know more about free range chickens and cage free eggs, there's a lot of stuff out there that you can read and we hope that you will. And since I said, we hope that you will, it's time for listener mail.
59:12 Speaker 02 That's right. This one is called Egg on Chuck's Face. Because I misspoke in a big way on our National Parks episode when I touted dispersed camping wherever you want in national parks. I meant, I was thinking of national forests.
59:26 Josh Clark? Oh.
59:27 Speaker 02 That's where you can do dispersed camping wherever you want. And, boy, I said it a bunch, so I... You can't camp anywhere you want in national parks.
59:35 Josh Clark? Okay.
59:36 Speaker 02 And I feel terrible for that being out there so much that we might even have to edit that, but... "Greetings from your friend and National Park Ranger. Your episode of National Parks was excellent," and we heard from quite a few park rangers, by the way. "I'd like to address a statement made by Chuck. Some national parks may still allow dispersed camping. It's commonly allowed in national forests, though. National parks and national forests are similar, but have different missions and are therefore managed differently. National parks tend to regulate recreation a little more strictly. In fact, many national parks now have permit systems in place for backpackers." Yeah, that's very, very true.
1:00:13 Josh Clark? Yeah.
1:00:13 Speaker 02 And those who successfully acquire permits, even then are often restricted to camping in designated backcountry campsites. This prevents overcrowding in popular destinations, which lessens the amount of abandoned gear, garbage, and food scraps inevitably left behind by certain visitors. Certain visitors. Wanted to address this because the regulating where people camp and how many people can camp in a certain area may seem extreme to some. It helps preserve the wilderness, character, and solitude. So, many visitors are seeking when they visit a national park. Additionally, visitors who dispersed camp in a park that requires a designated campsite and/or permit may be subject to fines. It's very important for all visitors to research regulations for any park, forest, or wilderness that they're visiting.
1:00:58 Speaker 02 Happy hiking." And that is from our no-named park ranger. This park ranger wished to remain anonymous, which is, we're always happy to do.
1:01:07 Josh Clark? Thank you, anonymous park ranger. Happy hiking to you as well.
1:01:11 Speaker 02 That's right. And I even had one park ranger say, "Don't make fun of our green shorts." And to be clear, I don't think those shorts are the same color as Chuck's.
1:01:21 Josh Clark? Oh, really?
1:01:21 Speaker 02 That's the color I was really making fun of.
1:01:23 Josh Clark? Okay.
1:01:23 Speaker 02 Maybe they are, but I don't, I don't know if there's a... If you could even make a fabric that color.
1:01:30 Josh Clark? Right. They just kind of appear.
1:01:32 Speaker 02 It doesn't adhere to textiles.
1:01:36 Josh Clark? Well, thank you very much again, Anonymous Park Ranger and to all the Park Rangers and everybody who wrote in to correct Chuck, who by the way, took it with aplomb. So way to go Chuck. If you want to get in touch with us via email, like your friendly Anonymous Park Ranger did, you can send it to [email protected] .
1:01:58 Speaker 03 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
1:02:14 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Introducing Voices of VivGart. VivGart is also known as its generic name, Fgart Tigamod Alpha F Cam. And this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease.
1:02:56 Josh Clark? Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder that Capital One Bank Guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See
1:03:41 Josh Clark? capitalone.com/bankguy. Capital One, N.A., Member FDIC.
1:03:46 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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