You are walking down the meat section at the grocery store and you see a package of chicken that says
"All Natural! No Antibiotics! Cage Free!"
and you wonder if those birds were raised outside on the grass... or in a crowded factory.
Companies use marketing terms to make their products seem healthy and appealing. They tend to highlight a few desirable things while forgetting to mention the undesirables.
And technically, legally, they are telling the truth...
You have to know what these labels mean if you want to be a savvy consumer.
Let's define animal product labels--and read between the lines. As much as possible, I am going to go by USDA legal definitions, and then interpret it to help you read between the lines and discern what you want to feed your family--or not.
Cows coming in to milk from the pasture.
All Natural
"A product containing no artificial ingredient or added color and is only minimally processed."
What this means to you: this is the minimum bar that I want all of my food to meet, but it is by no means a high standard. Meat (particularly chicken) can still have been soaked in chlorine dioxide, acidified sodium chlorite, trisodium phosphate, and peroxyacids to make it "safe".
This tells you nothing about what the animals ate, what medications they were given, or what kind of conditions they lived in.
Cage Free
"Chickens are not kept in cages and are able to move around freely in a building, room, or enclosed area."
What this means to you: "This allows them to perform natural behaviors like walking, perching, dustbathing, and laying eggs in nests. However, cage-free chickens doesn't necessarily mean they're roaming free in the outdoors. For example, most cage-free hens live in large flocks that can number in the thousands and never go outside. Commercial broiler farms also raise chickens in large, climate-controlled barns where they have room to move around, but are protected from predators, disease, and the elements." (quoted from google AI)
Cage Free are generally factory farmed animals.
Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)
This is not a label that you will see on meat, but it is an important concept to understand if you want to discern between factory farmed and pasture raised animals.
A CAFO is a factory farm. CAFO's can produce pork, poultry, eggs, beef (often raised on the range but finished in a feedlot), and dairy. The reason that producers choose to raise animals in CAFO's is because it reduces costs, protects animals from the weather, and keeps animals safe from predators. CAFO's house thousands of animals.
The downside of CAFO's is that animals tend to live in crowded conditions. They don't benefit from living outside in the sunshine as their ancestors did, eating fresh food like grass and bugs. They have been bred to not exhibit natural behaviors or traits that would allow them to survive in a natural environment, rather, they have been bred to maximize production on an intense diet.
There are labels that producers put on packaging to make you think that it was produced out on the grass, when in reality the animals were confined in unnatural conditions. Examples include "cage free" and (sometimes) "free range".
Free Range
The USDA’s (and industry standard) definition for “Free Range” is that birds must have “outdoor access” or “access to the outdoors.” In some cases, this can mean access only through a “pop hole,” with no full-body access to the outdoors and no minimum space requirement.
What this means to you: this is a case where knowing your farmer matters. If your farmer cares about holistic, regenerative farming, they might use this term to describe their methods, but so might someone who takes advantage of a loophole and actually raises animals in confinement.
There are also small farmers who house their animals outside and might tell you they are free range or pasture raised, but they overgraze the land, in essence turning it into a feedlot.
Grass Fed
"Grass (Forage) Fed" means that grass and forage shall be the feed source consumed for the lifetime of the ruminant animal, with the exception of milk consumed prior to weaning. The diet shall be derived solely from forage consisting of grass (annual and perennial), forbs (e.g., legumes, Brassica), browse, or cereal grain crops in the vegetative (pre-grain) state. Animals cannot be fed grain or grain byproducts and must have continuous access to pasture during the growing season."
What this means to you: Cows, sheep and goats are the only animals that you will find claiming to be grass fed, because as ruminants, only they are capable of fully digesting plant matter. Pigs and chickens are almost alway fed some grain, even if they are raised on pasture in the best conditions.
The term "grass fed" can be hijacked because pretty much all cows, goats and sheep will have eaten grass at some point in their lives. A farmer might claim grass fed while also feeding grain. I have seen butter that comes from cows that were "95% grass fed", which tells you that they are being fed something else, probably grain, for the remaining 5%. (To put that in perspective, that's not a bad percentage; some cows eat up to 50% of their diet in grain mixes.)
Grass Finished
This is when the producer wants to emphasize that their animals were never fed grain. While technically, "grass fed" should also be "grass finished", if meat is labeled grass finished, they are telling you that their grass fed animals are the real deal.
Organic
This is a very complicated label that cannot be easily summarized. For the purposes of this blog, here are four important aspects of being raised organic:
1. The animals were fed only organic feed and were never given many of the pharmaceuticals that are rampant in the farming industry (with a few exceptions).
2. This does not guarantee that the animal was raised on pasture. They may have been raised in confinement.
3. Grain is allowed as feed in organic production. Organic does not mean grass fed.
4. Organic milk can go through the same processing as conventional milk, including high heat pasteurization and homogenization.
Pastured / Pasture Raised
See Free Range
No Hormones
Pork and Poultry: "Hormones are not allowed in raising hogs or poultry. Therefore, the claim "no hormones added" cannot be used on the labels of pork or poultry unless it is followed by a statement that says "Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones."
Beef/Dairy: hormones are allowed, a common one is RBG hormone.
What this means to you: If pork or poultry packages state that they are hormone free, the producer is looking for ways to make their product look good even though it's the industry standard. On the other hand, if beef and dairy are labeled hormone free, that does say something good about that product.
No Antibiotics
"The terms "no antibiotics added" may be used on labels for meat or poultry products if sufficient documentation is provided by the producer to the Agency demonstrating that the animals were raised without antibiotics."
This is obviously a good thing. It doesn't mean that it's organic or raised on pasture. But it is a good thing.
Regenerative Farming
This is another term that is not a label with legal definitions, but is an important concept to understand if you want to discern between factory farmed animals and animals raised the best possible way.
Regenerative farmers use animals as a tool to heal and improve the land. They graze animals outside, rotate herds from one section of pasture to the next, allowing forage to regrow before getting grazed again. They tend to raise animals holistically.
Regenerative farming is more labor intensive, and animals grow slower, which is why the products tend to cost more.
Some people raise animals "on pasture", but they don't rotate pastures. The grass gets overgrazed, soil gets compacted, and the quality of wildlife habitat plummets. Not all pasture raised animals were raised in a way that improves the land.
USDA Certified
"The term "certified" implies that the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Agriculture Marketing Service have officially evaluated a meat product for class, grade, or other quality characteristics"
What this means to you: All meat that is sold as retail cuts must be processed in a facility under the inspection of the USDA. There is assurance of best practices being followed at a USDA butcher.
When you buy whole or half hogs or beef, they tend to be "custom butchered". This means that they were not USDA inspected, but the butcher is licensed by the state and meets certain standards. This is a good option for many people who want less government involvement in their food and don't want to pay the higher price of inspected processing. Meat from a custom butcher will have stickers that say Not For Sale, because they are not legal for individual cut sales.
Being USDA certified tells you nothing about how the animal was raised, only about the facility where it was processed.
Pigs on a pasture where they are moved before they overgraze the grass, which is healthy for the land and healthy for the animals.
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