Organic and Free-Range Animal Products: Fact or Fiction?

A recent Gallup poll found that 96 percent of Americans believe that animals should be protected from cruelty, yet animals on today's farms receive no protection from even the worst abuses.¹ As people become more aware of the horrors of factory farming, companies are responding by adding labels to their products with comforting words such as “organic,” “free-range,” “cage-free,” “natural,” and “Swine Welfare Assurance Program” (SWAP).

These labels may conjure up images of animals who roam freely in green pastures, but the reality of life and death for animals on organic, free-range, and SWAP farms is very different. On organic and free-range farms, most animals are mutilated without the use of painkillers, kept in filthy, disease-ridden sheds, and finally forced to endure a long trip to the slaughterhouse without food or water. There are no humane slaughterhouses—in fact, free-range and organic animals are often sent to the same slaughterhouses that kill animals from factory farms.

By far, the most common animal “welfare” labels are “SWAP” and “United Egg Producers (UEP) Certified.” These labels are simply fancy names for factory farming—both were created by meat and egg lobbying groups, and both simply serve to put a happy face on the absolute worst practices in today's factory farms.

The UEP Certified label reads, “Produced in Compliance With United Egg Producers' Animal Husbandry Guidelines.” What the label doesn't say is that the "guidelines" mean next to nothing. The program allows factory farmers to cut off hens' sensitive beaks with a hot blade, cram six or seven hens into a tiny cage where they can't spread even one wing, and house them in filthy sheds with more than 100,000 other hens.² UEP had been stamping its egg cartons “Animal Care Certified," but after Compassion Over Killing sued the industry for misleading consumers, the industry was forced to adopt the less deceptive “UEP Certified” label. However, the exact same horrific treatment of hens continues. Watch what happens on UEP-certified farms.

The SWAP label shows a gentle hand cradling a pig. In reality, SWAP allows all the worst abuses, including keeping mother pigs in filthy cement-and-metal crates so small that they can't even turn around and cutting piglets' ears, yanking out their testicles, and chopping off their tails—all without any painkillers. SWAP even allows farms to kill sick piglets by slamming their heads into the pavement.³ Most people would agree that the products from animals who are abused in these ways should not be labeled “care certified” or “welfare assurance,” but the meat and egg industries have adopted these phrases to con consumers and increase their profits.

Animal products with labels designed to make us feel good about eating animals are typically not much better for the animals themselves than the regular animal products are, but they are also nearly as harmful to our health. The only advantage that organic products have is that they are not laced with arsenic, antibiotics, or hormones. Although flesh from these animals might be safer than that from drugged animals, the best choice is to avoid all meat. Organic, natural, and free-range flesh, milk, and eggs are devoid of complex carbohydrates and fiber and are laden with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol, just as all animal products are. Major studies linking the consumption of animal products to heart disease, cancer, and other leading killers suggest that it's these components of animal foods-animal fat, animal protein, and a lack of fiber-that cause disease. Organic and free-range animals are killed in the same filthy slaughterhouses as animals from factory farms, so their flesh is subject to the same bacterial contamination from unsanitary conditions as well.

A Word on Farmed Fish

The meat industry has also been promoting farm-raised fish as a sustainable alternative to wild-caught fish. What the industry doesn't want you to know is that farm-raised fish must be fed 5 pounds of wild-caught fish in order to produce just 1 pound of meat, making aquafarming worse—by a factor of five—than commercial fishing, which is destroying our aquatic eco-systems.⁴ Fish farms cause fish to suffer too—conditions on some aquafarms are so horrendous that as many as 40 percent of the fish die before farmers can kill and package them for food.⁵ Farmed-fish flesh contains contaminants such as mercury, dioxins, PCBs, and other toxins.

¹ David W. Moore, “Public Lukewarm on Animal Rights,” Gallup News Service, 21 May 2003.
² Animal Care Certified, “UEP's Animal Care Certified Program,” 2004.
³ National Pork Board, “Swine Welfare Assurance Program,” 2003.
⁴ John Robbins, The Food Revolution (Berkeley: Conari Press, 2001) p. 298.
⁵ “Authority Wants to Stop 'Fish Torture,'” Aftenposten, 28 Jul. 2004.

Organic Animal Products

“Organic” simply means drug- and chemical-free—organic animals can be subjected to all the same types of cruelty that occur in factory farms, and as long as they are not dosed with drugs or fed food that was treated with pesticides, their meat and milk can be labeled “organic.” However, because farmers are accustomed to dosing animals with drugs to make them grow larger and increase their profit margin, very few have been willing to go chemical and drug-free. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, less than 1 percent of animals raised for meat in the U.S. meets the criteria for the organic label.⁶ Among the farms that are chemical-free, some may continue to dose animals with drugs and then fraudulently label their animal products organic. When the European Union randomly sampled “hormone-free” cow flesh from the U.S., they found that 12 percent of the meat had been treated with powerful sex hormones that are banned in Europe.⁷

Even if they are genuinely drug-free, animals on organic farms are often treated no better than their counterparts in factory farms. Farmers know that the more animals they raise in the least amount of space, the more profitable they will be. Many organic farms cram thousands of animals together in sheds or mud-filled lots, just as factory farms do. Steve Demos, former overseer of the Horizon Organic brand of milk, explains, “There’s a certain idealistic appreciation for a farm with 10 cows grazing on a hill at sunrise. But there are 280 million people in the Unites States. … Long ago they said that small was beautiful; they forgot to tell you it’s not profitable.”⁸

Animals on organic farms often suffer through the same mutilations that occur in factory farms. Cattle have their horns sawed off and their testicles cut out of their scrotums, and they’re held down and branded with sizzling-hot irons, resulting in third-degree burns. Pigs on organic farms may have their tails chopped off and chunks of their ears cut out—and some have rings put into their noses in order to permanently prevent them from rooting in the grass and dirt, which is one of pigs’ favorite pastimes. Chickens on organic egg farms usually have their beaks burnt off. None of these animals are given any painkillers.

The living conditions of animals on organic farms are often very similar to the conditions in factory farms. Chickens and pigs are often confined to large warehouses that reek of ammonia and rotting excrement. Many organic cows are sent to factory-farm feedlots to be fattened prior to slaughter, where they live in tiny enclosures caked with feces and mud—cows who are fattened on feedlots can still be labeled organic as long as they’re given organic feed.⁹ Cows on organic dairy farms may be kept in sheds or filthy enclosures, where they spend their lives mired in their own waste, enduring the strain of continuous pregnancies and the theft of their babies. According to an investigative report by Salon.com, some organic dairy companies, such as Horizon Organic, are really factory farms in disguise—the report states that the cows “at one of Horizon’s dairy farms in central Idaho … don’t look too happy. … [E]xperts say that a substantial percentage of cows at [organic] farms like Horizon’s are confined to pens.”¹⁰

Farmers may not give medicine to animals who are suffering because the farmer can get a higher price for their meat and milk if the animals retain organic status.¹¹ Studies have found that up to one-third of pigs on some organic farms are suffering from untreated infections, and reports also state that organic pigs often suffer from internal and external parasites, which could be passed on to the people who eat them.^12,13 Organic chickens on some farms suffer from higher mortality rates than drugged chickens because extremely crowded and filthy housing conditions can lead to parasites and cannibalism.¹⁴ When the udders of cows on organic dairy farms become infected from frequent milkings, many farmers don’t give the cows medicine because then their milk would lose the organic label, which allows the product to be sold at a higher price.

Given these facts, it’s not surprising that the Advertising Standards Authority of the British government has ruled that it is deceptive to claim that animals raised on organic farms enjoy better lives than animals in conventional factory farms.¹⁵ The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals testified before a British parliamentary committee, saying, “Organic farming is often perceived as being synonymous with high standards of farm animal welfare. However, this perception … appear[s] to be without foundation.”¹⁶ Similarly, a commission funded by the European Union concluded that “a growing body of evidence suggests that the animal health situation on organic farms is no better than that reported in conventional livestock production systems.”

⁶ Molly Colin, “Elite Meat,” The Christian Science Monitor 14 Jul. 2003.
⁷ Robbins 144.
⁸ Rebecca Clarren, “Land of Milk and Honey,” Salon.com, 13 Apr. 2005.
⁹ Lara McGlashan, “Soul Food,” Joe Weider’s Muscle & Fitness Jun. 2005.
¹⁰ Clarren.
¹¹ Tom Drudik, “Regulations Differ Greatly for Organic, Natural Beef,” The Grand Island Independent 2 Apr. 2005.
¹² John Hermansen, Vivi Larsen, and Bent Andersen, “Development of Organic Pig Production Systems,” Organic E-Prints, 2002.
¹³ “TalkingGP-Hollis,” Farmers Weekly 8 Apr. 2005.
¹⁴ “TalkingGP-Hollis.”
¹⁵ “TalkingGP-Hollis.”
¹⁶ “TalkingGP-Hollis.”

The Egg Industry's History of Deceiving Consumers

Awareness of the horrors of egg factory farms has increased substantially in the last 10 years. United Egg Producers (UEP), the industry's main trade organization, responded to this concern by slapping a label reading “Animal Care Certified” on each carton of eggs. The “certification” was meant to whitewash the industry's tarnished image. It still permitted all the worst abuses, including allowing factory farmers to cut off hens' sensitive beaks with a hot blade, cram six or seven hens into tiny battery cages where they can't spread even one wing, and house them in filthy sheds with more than 100,000 other birds.¹⁷ Compassion Over Killing, a Washington, D.C.-based animal rights group, successfully used legal action to force United Egg Producers to remove the “Animal Care Certified" label. Instead of treating hens better, however, the UEP has now begun using a new misleading label that reads, “United Egg Producers Certified: Produced in Compliance With United Egg Producers' Animal Husbandry Guidelines.” This label still permits the exact same horrible treatment of hens.¹⁸

Cage-Free and Free-Range Chickens Used for Eggs

Although many consumers believe that labels such as free-range, free-roaming, or cage-free mean that these chickens spend their days in natural outdoor settings, the label means something entirely different to the egg industry.

Hens on commercial cage-free farms are not kept in cages, but they still have their sensitive beaks cut off with a hot blade and are crammed together in filthy sheds where they will live for years until their egg production wanes and they're sent to slaughter. They never go outside, breathe fresh air, feel the sun on their backs, or do anything else that is natural or important to them. They suffer from the same lung lesions and ammonia burns as hens in cages, and they have breast blisters to add to their suffering.

Although hens in cage-free systems are clearly better off than hens in cages—just imagine a cat or dog living in a tiny cage for two years with five to six other cats or dogs and never leaving that cage until it's time for slaughter—their bodily condition can actually be worse because they are taken from cages and plopped down in their own excrement for years at a time. This does not mean that cages are good, which the industry might claim, but from an animal welfare perspective, “cage-free” means “much better but still extraordinarily cruel.”

Reports from people who have visited free-range egg farms indicate that conditions are no different in these systems. While free-range and organic egg farms are technically supposed to give birds outdoor access, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has decided that “they may be temporarily confined” for “reasons of health, safety, the animal's stage of production or to protect soil or water quality.” ¹⁹ This loophole is big enough to drive a truck through, and the owners of many free-range egg farms take full advantage of it by almost never allowing the birds outside. At a Horizon Foods organic and free-range farm, the hen sheds house more than 400,000 birds—hardly a small, natural, family-run business. Style Weekly reported that “when you pull into the parking lot, there is not a chicken to be seen or a cluck to be heard. To the left of the lot stands the egg-processing plant. To the right, five long windowless 'chicken houses.' Except for the sound of an American flag snapping in the wind, all is silent.”²⁰ Scott Akom, general manager of the Horizon farm, freely admitted that the hens do not see the light of day, and he refused to allow the reporter to actually see any of the free-range birds. He said that all of his free-range hens were currently kept in sheds, telling the reporter, “Free-roaming and cage-free mean the same thing. The chickens are free to go wherever they want. Inside the chicken house.”²¹ When birds are given outdoor access, it's usually for very short periods of time, and the outdoor area often just consists of a hole cut in the shed wall leading to a small, muddy enclosure.

Male chicks who are born on organic or free-range egg farms are crushed to death or stuffed into garbage bags and left to suffocate because they don't produce eggs and are of no use to the industry. A report in E magazine explained the reality behind this misleading label: “If people got the full story, I would hope they would choose not to consume eggs at all. It's intrinsically problematic to raise chickens for egg consumption. Male chicks are thrown away, even in small-scale operations, since they don't lay eggs. That's 50 percent of the chicks that are destroyed.”²²

¹⁷ Animal Care Certified.
¹⁸ Compassion Over Killing, "Victory: COK Wins 'Animal Care Certified' Campaign," 27 Mar. 2006.
¹⁹ U.S. Department of Agriculture, "The National Organic Program: Organic Production and Handling Standards," Oct. 2002, 27 Mar. 2006.
²⁰ Laura LaFay, "Into the Frying Pan," Style Weekly 14 Apr. 2004.
²¹ LaFay.
²² Starre Vartan, "Happy Eggs," E/The Environmental Magazine May-Jun. 2003.

Free-Range Chickens

The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that free-range chickens used for meat have access to the outdoors, but many free-range chickens never spend any time outside because they’ve been bred and drugged to grow so obese that they can hardly move. Washington State University farm expert Terry Swagerty confirms that most free-range chickens never go outside because, he says, “They’re not bred for mobility. They’re bred for hogging down food.”²³ Or as The Seattle Times puts it, “[T]hey’ve been known to plop down and not walk at all.”²⁴ Richard Lobb, spokesperson for the National Chicken Council, explains in a moment of candor, “If you go to a free-range farm and expect to see a bunch of chickens galloping around in pastures, you’re kidding yourself.”²⁵ Some in the chicken industry are conning consumers by labeling these birds free-range when most are deprived of everything that is natural to them and forced to endure the same conditions as chickens in factory farms—including extreme crowding, cruel breeding, and filthy and disease-ridden living conditions.

Free-Range Turkeys

Like free-range chickens, free-range turkeys are generally not treated any better than turkeys raised in factory farms. Birds who are labeled free-range must have access to the outdoors, but access can mean a hole in the shed that goes out to a tiny, fenced-in mud lot. Plus, like chickens, many turkeys who are sold under the free-range label have been bred and drugged to grow so large that walking is painful or impossible.

University of California-Davis poultry scientist Ralph Ernst explains, “These [free-range turkeys] are raised much like the regular turkeys.”²⁶ Another industry insider, turkey farmer Mary Pitman, says, “Consumers can really be fooled. Some farms can qualify for free range, but they raise [turkeys] in the same conditions as industrial farms.”²⁷

A recent investigation into free-range turkey farms found that turkeys on these farms spend nearly all their time in extremely crowded, filthy sheds where the air is so heavy with ammonia that it hurts to breathe, and the birds are bred to grow so obese that they become crippled. The dead are left to rot among the survivors. Learn more about what investigators found and go on a photo-tour of a free-range turkey farm.

²³ Judith Blake, “Advocates Say Both Chickens and Consumers Benefit With Free Range,” The Seattle Times 26 Aug. 2003.
²⁴ Blake.
²⁵ McGlashan.
²⁶ East Bay Animal Advocates, “Free-Range Turkey Factsheet,” 2004.
²⁷ East Bay Animal Advocates.

The Truth Behind the Swine Welfare Assurance Program

The most common “welfare” label on pig products is the National Pork Producers Council’s Swine Welfare Assurance Program (SWAP) label. Sadly, like the United Egg Producers Certified label on eggs, the SWAP guidelines are a complete farce, endorsing practices so cruel that they’re illegal in many countries and would warrant felony cruelty-to-animals charges if the victims were dogs or cats. SWAP allows factory farmers to cut pigs’ testicles from their scrotums, use the equivalent of a hole punch to mutilate their ears, and chop off their tails, all without the use of painkillers. SWAP also allows factory farmers to cram mother pigs into filthy crates so small that they can’t even turn around, pump the animals so full of drugs that many become crippled, and kill sick pigs using blunt trauma (i.e., cracking their heads against the concrete floor), gunshots, and electrocution.²⁸

Most consumers would agree that the flesh of animals who were subjected to these types of cruelty shouldn’t be stamped with a “welfare” label, but this hasn’t stopped the National Pork Producers Council from continuing to con consumers with the SWAP logo.

²⁸ National Pork Board.

The Transport and Slaughter of Organic and Free-Range Animals

There are no standards regulating the treatment of organic, free-range, or cage-free animals during transport and slaughter, and many of these animals are shipped on trucks through all weather extremes to the same slaughterhouses used by factory farms. At the slaughterhouse, the animals are hung upside-down and their throats are cut, often while they are still conscious and struggling to escape. Some are still conscious when they are forced into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering tanks or when their bodies are hacked apart. If you’re buying organic or free-range animal products because you think that the animals were given kind deaths, you are sadly mistaken. Read more about what happens to animals during transport and at slaughterhouses.

Organic and Free-Range Products: Better for Your Health?

Organic and free-range meat products are loaded with saturated fat, cholesterol, and excess protein, which have been shown to cause heart disease, cancer, obesity, and a range of other serious ailments. Since organic and free-range animals are often killed in the same filthy slaughterhouses used for factory-farmed animals, their flesh is just as likely to be contaminated with bacteria that can make us sick. The only way to protect yourself from the health problems caused by meat is to leave it off your plate for good. Learn more about how meat affects your health.

One reason that consumers buy organic milk is that they think it’s healthier, but in reality, it is just as unnatural for humans to drink the milk of a cow as it is for a dog to drink the milk of a rat. Organic cow’s milk is loaded with as much saturated fat and cholesterol as regular milk, and it is often contaminated with pus and blood from cows who had udder infections and weren’t given medicine because, if they were, the farmers wouldn’t be able to label their milk organic. According to physician and author Dr. Michael Greger, “The dairy herd is sick—these are sick and diseased cows, producing pus-filled milk that even industry standards call ‘unhealthful.’”²⁹ Plus, organic milk is certainly not hormone-free—all milk contains hormones because cows produce hormones naturally. All dairy products—including those labeled organic—increase your risk for a host of illnesses, including heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, asthma, acne, and diabetes.

Organic and free-range eggs are loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol. Our bodies make all the cholesterol we need, and eating additional cholesterol in the form of animal products such as eggs can lead to heart disease, obesity, and strokes. Plus, eggs are the primary source of salmonella infection, which sickens more than a million people every year in the U.S.^30,31

Organic and free-range farms produce massive amounts of untreated animal excrement that fouls surrounding waterways, and these farms contribute to global hunger because the animals are being fed grain that could go to hungry humans. Read more about how the farmed-animal industry pollutes the environment, sickens rural communities, and contributes to world hunger.

²⁹ Michael Greger, e-mail message to PETA, 20 Feb. 2005.
³⁰ Pamela Ruegg, “Salmonella, Listeria, E. Coli, and Mycobacterium Paratuberculosis in Milk: Is There Cause for Concern?” University of Wisconsin-Madison.
³¹ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Salmonella,” 16 Jul. 1999.

Other Labels

Aside from the labels outlined in previous sections, the following are some other labels that are common on animal products:

Certified:

Meat that has been stamped with this label has been “evaluated” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture “for class, grade, or other quality characteristics.”

Grass-Fed:

This label is used on beef to indicate that the cow ate a diet of grass—what they would naturally eat—instead of the unnatural and unhealthy grain diets that most cows are fed in order to fatten them up before slaughter. Although cows surely suffer less when they’re allowed to eat grass (grain diets can lead to liver abscesses, constant digestive pain, and death), grass-fed cows are still subjected to mutilations without the use of painkillers and are often killed in the same slaughterhouses as cows from factory farms, and they threaten fragile ecosystems by eating all the grass and other plants and pounding down the earth in the areas where they are kept.

Natural:

Use of this label is permitted if the product contains “no artificial ingredients or added color and is only minimally processed.” According to farmer Amiel Cooper, “Natural is a virtually meaningless word [when it is applied to animal products].”³²

No Antibiotics:

This label can be used on beef and poultry products, provided that the producer supplies “sufficient documentation … that the animals were raised without antibiotics.”³³

No Hormones:

This label applies only to beef. Since hormones are not supposed to be given to pigs or chickens, pork and poultry products cannot legally be tagged with this label without the disclaimer “Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones.”

None of these labels regulate the welfare of animals in any way.

³² Colin.
³³ Food Safety and Inspection Service, “Meat and Poultry Labeling Terms,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Aug. 2003.

What Should Caring Consumers Do?

People buy animal products with labels such as Swine Welfare Assurance Program, Animal Care Certified, free-range, and cage-free because they care about the welfare of animals, as nearly all Americans do. But if you are concerned about the treatment of farmed animals, by far the best thing that you can do is to stop paying others to abuse and kill them.

Chickens, pigs, fish, and other farmed animals are individuals with feelings, desires, and a will to live—just as we are. Most of us would never eat a dog or cat, and similarly, we should not eat any animal—there is no moral difference between eating a chicken or a cat, a pig or a dog. If you think that your local health food store sells products made from farmed animals who were treated well until they were killed painlessly, take this challenge: Visit the farm. Visit the slaughterhouse. Chances are, you will be denied access. Then ask yourself, “What are they trying to hide?”

If you are able to visit the farm and watch the animals be slaughtered, ask yourself if that’s what you want to support when you sit down to eat. Then ask yourself, “Would I want to cut an animal’s throat?” And if your answer is “no,” as it is for most Americans, then ask yourself what it is about eating flesh that is so appealing that you’ll pay others to do something you wouldn’t do yourself and that you don’t even want to watch.

All of us could spend an afternoon getting plant foods to the table—there is no suffering or cruelty involved in cultivating and harvesting beans, grains, fruits, or vegetables—but very few of us would want to watch any aspect of what is required to get chickens, fish, pigs, cattle, dairy products, or eggs to the table, including seeing terrified animals being mutilated without the use of painkillers and having their throats cut. Please consider this: Where is the integrity in paying others to do things that you can’t even watch?

Learn more about chickens, pigs, fish, turkeys, and cows. Once you know them a bit better, you probably won’t want to eat them.

Learn more about how you can help.