WHEN EGG CARTONS SAY THE EGGS WERE LAID BY “FREE-RANGE” HENS, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
2010 May 19 by G. Edward Griffin We got into an animated discussion at our house last week when I asked exactly what it meant when an egg carton says the eggs were laid by “free-range” chickens. That phrase conjures up an image of my uncle’s farm in Ohio back in the 1940s with chickens rambling all over the barnyard and, occasionally, into the fields even across the road. Well, according to Jo Hartley, a contributing journalist at the Natural News web site, this is far from the truth. Hartley says: “The USDA allows labeling eggs as “free range eggs” if they are from a farm that allows the hen access to an outside area for at least five minutes each day. Nowhere is it stipulated that the hen actually has to go outside; it only has to have the access to do so for at least five minutes in each 24-hour period.” (Full article) We might add that this also does not specify what “outside” means. Is it merely a part of the cage open to the sky? Nor does it specify how large the “outside” area m
