It's no secret that the labels on the foods we buy can be incredibly confusing. And when it comes to understanding the tags on meat products , there's a lot of information to process — especially with chicken goods. They're now the most-consumed meat in the world, and it makes sense.
We love everything from that perfect piece of Southern fried chicken to some classic Buffalo wings . We can't get enough! So, let's talk about a term that you may have seen popping up more and more: "pasture raised." Here's where things can get super confusing — chicken can also be free range, which sounds like a similar label.
So, what's the difference? In a nutshell, pasture-raised chickens spend most of their lives outside. This is very different from free-range chickens and those that are raised in factory farms, which are production facilities that rear animals in indoor areas. There's been increasing awareness of the conditions present in many of these facilities in recents years.
Nevertheless, the United States Department of Agriculture released its quinquennial Census of Agriculture report in 2024, and it showed that the number of mega factory farms are on the rise, packing more animals into less space and pushing smaller facilities out of the equation. However, the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association reported in 2023 that the number of farmers using a pasture-raised model was steadily increasing as well. It also stressed that there's a big difference between not only the .
