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Free Range
Free range means that animals and poultry roam around outside. They are not raised in crowded buildings. Farmers practice free range to reduce feed costs and to improve the happiness and liveliness of their animals. The meat from free range animals and poultry is tastier. |
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Organik currently sells two free range lines, Cebon and Lam Sinh Thai.
- Cebon has many varieties of sausage which you can access from the left side of the Home Page by clicking on meat.
- Lam Sinh Thai has chickens and eggs. Their products are very safe. No enzymes are used in the production and processing of these animals and birds. They were fed organically grown corn and rice.
Some information for Free Range Standard of United States
Free range jurisdictions
Traditional American usage equates "free-range" with "unfenced," and with the implication that there was no herdsman keeping them together or managing them in any way. Legally, a free-range jurisdiction allowed livestock (perhaps only of a few named species) to run free, and the owner was not liable for any damage they caused. In such jurisdictions, people who wished to avoid damage by livestock had to fence them out; in others, the owners had to fence them in.
Free range poultry
In recent years, with the days of free-range cattle mostly in the past, neither the presence of a "legal fence" surrounding the farm nor the pros and cons of old-time free-range ranching are the main points of interest. Instead, the term "free range" is mainly used as a marketing term rather than a husbandry term, meaning something on the order of, "low stocking density," "pasture-raised," "grass-fed," "old-fashioned," "humanely raised," etc. In poultry-keeping, "free range" is widely confused with yarding, which means keeping poultry in fenced yards. Yarding, as well as floorless portable chicken pens ("chicken tractors") may have some of the benefits of free-range livestock but, in reality, the methods have little in common with the free-range method.
A behavioral definition of free range is perhaps the most useful: "chickens kept with a fence that restricts their movements very little." This has practical implications. For example, according to Jull, "The most effective measure of preventing cannibalism seems to be to give the birds good grass range." De-beaking was invented to prevent cannibalism for birds not on free range, and the need for de-beaking can be seen as a litmus test for whether the chickens' environment is sufficiently "free-range-like."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) requires that chickens raised for their meat have access to the outside in order to receive the free-range certification. There is no requirement for access to pasture, and there may be access to only dirt or gravel . Free-range chicken eggs, however, have no legal definition in the United States. Likewise, free-range egg producers have no common standard on what the term means.
The USDA has no specific definition for "free-range" beef, pork, and other non-poultry products. All USDA definitions of "free-range" refer specifically to poultry. No other criteria-such as the size of the range or the amount of space given to each animal-are required before beef, lamb, and pork can be called "free-range". Claims and labeling using "free range" are therefore unregulated. The USDA relies "upon producer testimonials to support the accuracy of these claims."
In a December 30, 2002 Federal Register notice and request for comments (67 Fed. Reg. 79552), USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service proposed "minimum requirements for livestock and meat industry production/marketing claims". Many industry claim categories are included in the notice, including breed claims, antibiotic claims, and grain fed claims. "Free Range, Free Roaming, or Pasture Raised" would be defined as "livestock that have had continuous and unconfined access to pasture throughout their life cycle" with an exception for swine ("continuous access to pasture for at least 80% of their production cycle"). This proposed rule making is still in play. In a May 12, 2006 Federal Register notice (71 Fed. Reg. 27662), the agency presented a summary and its responses to comments received in the 2002 notice, but only for the category "grass (forage) fed" which the agency stated was to be a category separate from "free range." Comments received for other categories, including "free range," are to be published in future Federal Register editions.
The broadness of "free range" in the U.S. has caused some people to look for alternative terms. "Pastured poultry" is a term promoted by farmer/author Joel Salatin for broiler chickens raised on grass pasture for all of their lives except for the initial brooding period. The Pastured Poultry concept is promoted by the American Pastured Poultry Producers' Association (APPPA) , an organization of farmers raising their poultry using Salatin's principles.
Alternative terminology can also be used to make high-density confinement sound more palatable. For example: cage-free, free-running, free-roaming, naturally nested, etc. are used as an alternative to the technical term, high-density floor confinement. Whether high-density floor confinement is more humane than high-density cage confinement is arguable, but in any event, high-density confinement (of whatever type) is the antithesis of free range.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_range#Reference
