The title is misleading. The problem is industrial scale egg-farming and the meaningless “free-range” label; most people see “free-range” and think “pastured.” The marketing is unfortunately working exactly as intended. Industrial scale anything is going to be bad for ecosystems, animals, and people.
Indeed, around 1% of free-range are actually on pasture, but fully pasture-based systems are also significantly worse on resource and land efficiency, so the stats are worse for pasture systems. They also require an increase in the number of chickens
There is really not an at scale way to get there. Production and consumption levels of animal products have to go down
The title is misleading. The problem is industrial scale egg-farming and the meaningless “free-range” label; most people see “free-range” and think “pastured.” The marketing is unfortunately working exactly as intended. Industrial scale anything is going to be bad for ecosystems, animals, and people.
Indeed, around 1% of free-range are actually on pasture, but fully pasture-based systems are also significantly worse on resource and land efficiency, so the stats are worse for pasture systems. They also require an increase in the number of chickens
There is really not an at scale way to get there. Production and consumption levels of animal products have to go down