Free range, cages or barn kept?!
Answers: Hello I want to know what type of places the chickens used are kept. Are the chickens for various fast food joits like hungry Jacks etc kept in either caged environment or barn or even free range? I dont want to know where the supplier is like Ingams or what ever I want to know about the free range etc. I already know about KFC so I would preferably like to know about the others.
every commercial user of chicken (fast food, ready meals, supermarkets, airline food, schools) use cheap and nasty battery caged chickens.
The reason for this is price and the fact that it is only this side of the industry that can supply the numbers of chickens needed by these consumers.
Unfortunately free range/organic cannot yet scale to meet the demand of these types of consumer.
This answer is about eggs, but the premise is the same.
Fast food places get thier eggs from battery hens. Most "chain" resturants do the same.
High quality resturants claim to use free range eggs but to be honest I recommend you take a trip and find a commercial free range farm ( or more acurately "industrial unit" ) adn take a look at what "free range" really means. They are large barns with external cages, hen density is about 10 hens per square metre, there is no natural foraiging for the birds - all thier food and water is artificially supplied.
There are plenty of these units around the UK. People who buy free range are certainly doing more for the hens than those that buy battery or barn eggs. But the industry and marketing is taking them for a ride.
Also remember that commerical layers are killed at 9 months old, not the natural 8-10 years of a natural hen's life.
If you want to buy eggs, the most ethical way of doing so is via the farm gate, from a hobby farmer where you can see the hens being looked after and there is no stock rotation once the production drops.
Our local michelin stared resturant buys commerical "free range eggs and chickens" for its resturant, but for thier personal use they buy eggs from our farm gate because they want better ones. If a ￡100/head ( $200 ) resturant does that, what is the chance of an average resturant doing any better ?
commercial free range eggs have a wholesale price of 60p ($1.20 ) for 6. Thats miles off "proper" free range costs.
To properly support REAL free range hens eggs would have to cost about ￡5 ( $10 ) per half dozen.
Can you see KFC ( or any resturant ) paying that ?
(this figures are not made up - they are from the DEFRA report into sustainable farming publisehd in 2007. It makes good reading if you really want to see what meat and animal products SHOULD cost to give the animal a decent standard of life )
All I know is they are in cages. I get mine from my sister, she has her own chickens and I know what they eat and their not caged.
free range
Cage eggs are nasty pieces of work. When I was a kid we lived just down the road from the Sunny Queen Egg Farm and my father took my sister and I to get some chickens from there to have on our own property. They are in cages with wire cage bottoms as well so their poo drops right through. they drink water from a drip device, and they cannot move - there are about three or four to a tiny cage. The eggs roll down onto a conveyor belt or something.
The chickens we bought, we had to help them how to drink by dipping their beaks in the water and tilting their head back so the water ran down their throat. Some of the chickens we had to even teach to walk properly. It is so sad.
I always try to get free range or at least barn eggs.
why do you claim that you only buy free range eggs and not barn ones and then change your story up and say ALL of your eggs come from your hens? -__-
fast food/chain restuarants get their poultry from factory farms.
now lets talk definitions. Free range means the animal is not caged but does not mean the animal ever goes outside. So any bird kept out of a cage and in a barn is technically free ranged. All birds raised for meat are kept in large barns and by the time they are big enough to kill are packed in like sardines.
Battery hens are caged. Free range hens are not caged but kept in huge barns and usually not allowed outside.
The best poultry/eggs comes from small farms that pasture their poultry on green lush pasture daily. Even than it is best if the birds are fed certified organic feed.