How do you know if a chicken from the shop really is free range?!
Answers: What are the tell-tale signs that it is/is not?
A good way to tell is of they have well-proportioned legs and breasts (hahaha, lets get all the breast and leg jokes out of the way now...) . Many non-free range chooks are bred to have very big breasts, and are kept in small spaces with no room to walk around, so their legs don't develop.
Free range will also have nice layers of white (or yellow if they are corn-fed) fat around the sides of the breast and the thighs. this will cook out as the chicken cooks and make the meat juicy and tender.
The flesh of free-range is often more textured than intensively reared. As the chickens wander around, their muscles develop and create a proper grain in the meat. Intensively reared chickens' meat often has a 'mushy' kind of texture without a true 'grain' to the meat (ie you can't really shred it into long pieces, but it just sort of crumbles to pieces in your fingers)
But really, as mentioned above, they shouldn't be advertising it as free-range if it is not.
The shopowner would be contravening the Trade Descriptions Act if he tried to pass off factory bred bird as a free range bird and would be jeopordising his reputation and livlehood.
It should say on it if it's free range.
Otherwise, if it's a whole chicken, look at the legs and see if there are red sore-like areas on it. If it has then it's probably a battery farmed chicken. The sores are caused by the chickens not being able to stand up properly because they are overfed so much in such a short time that their bones have not properly developed to carry their weight.
Hmm...I don't know.
If it isn't want they say it is, it's false advertising... subject to legal action?
it is illegal for them to put free range if it is not, places like that get checked up on
If a chicken is free-range it will be labelled as such - simply because these birds cost more so the seller wants you know what you're buying.
It is illegal to sell a bird as free-range if doesn't have access to the outdoors.
Chickens that are not free-range usually don't have any kind of info on them, unlike eggs which by law have to state the production method. So if it doesn't say free-range then it isn't.