When you roll your cart up to the egg section of the dairy aisle at the local grocery store, there is no shortage of options to choose from. There’s always the choice between brown and white eggs, but beyond color, there’s also a litany of terms differentiating each carton (and usually a pretty significant price difference between them, too). Food labeling is generally clear as mud. (Do you know what sell-by, use-by, and best-by dates on food items really mean?) When it comes to eggs, some common terms you might see on the packaging are cage-free, free-range, pasture-raised, and organic, and the first three might all sound very similar. We’ll break down what each term means, so you can more easily decipher what is marketing, and what terms have a more meaningful definition.
Cage-Free
What You Might Think This Term Means: Nobody likes to think of chickens all cooped up in tiny cages for their whole lives. You might see cage-free on an egg carton and think that it means these chickens live a better life, free to roam outside the confines of an enclosure with their chicken buddies.
What It Actually Means: While we completely understand why someone would draw that conclusion (in fact, that’s what the labels want you to think), the reality is a little more complicated.
Cage-free is a USDA regulated term, which the organization defines as eggs, “Laid by hens that are able to roam vertically and horizontally in indoor houses, and have access to fresh food and water. Cage-free systems vary from farm-to-farm, and can include multi-tier aviaries.”
This is a significant improvement on life in a battery cage, which allows only 67 square inches of cage space per bird (less than a standard sheet of paper.) These chickens still do not have access to the outdoors though, so while cage-free is certainly a step in the right direction for better animal treatment, it’s far from perfect or cruelty-free.
Free-Range
What You Might Think This Term Means: You might imagine chickens freely roaming on a farm, stretching their legs and eating grubs. Sounds like a good life, huh?
What It Actually Means: This is also a USDA regulated term, which denotes much the same as cage-free, but also specifies that chicken must have, “Continuous access to the outdoors during their laying cycle.” In theory this is great, but in practice an outdoor area can be nothing more than a crowded and small, fenced area.
Pasture-Raised
What You Might Think This Term Means: Chickens frolicking in the grass, free to eat and roam in lush green pastures as they please.
What It Actually Means: This term is not regulated by the USDA, so on its own it can be hard to say what this term means and can vary from brand to brand. If a carton is labeled pasture-raised and also includes a Certified Humane® seal, then you can deduce a little more about how those eggs were produced.
The Certified Humane® pasture seal indicates several important factors in how the chickens used to make those eggs were raised and lived.
- They get to roam freely on a pasture during daylight hours.
- Chickens can forage, run, perch, bathe, and socialize.
- The hens are provided tents for shade, water coolers, and sometimes trees.
- Every farm with this seal is audited by an inspector who must have a master’s degree, or a doctorate in animal science. They must also be an expert on the species they inspect.
Organic
What You Might Think This Term Means: You likely don’t think of caged chickens as organic. You probably imagine healthy, happy chickens on a lush farm with plenty of access to the outdoors that eat a mostly bug-based diet.
What It Actually Means: Eggs labeled with the USDA’s National Organic Program label are defined as coming from, “Uncaged hens that are free to roam in their houses and have access to the outdoors. The hens are fed an organic diet of feed produced without conventional pesticides or fertilizers.”
As for their access to the outdoors, organic egg farmers have to allow at least one square foot of outdoor space for each 2.25 pounds of poultry in their flock. It’s not a ton of room, but certainly more space than caged chickens get.
Other Terms To Know
100% Natural: Natural is not a regulated term, so it doesn’t really mean anything. Plus, eggs by definition are a naturally occurring food product. This term is often conflated with organic, but simply means nothing was added to the eggs.
Vegetarian-Fed: Chickens by nature are omnivores, but when it comes to commercially produced eggs this term can be helpful because chickens are often fed animal by products in their food, like feather meal or chicken litter. Anything labeled vegetarian-fed means the chickens’ diet does not contain these by products.
Hormone-Free: This term is a bit of a misnomer as all living creatures have naturally occurring hormones. This term is really referring to added hormones. It’s illegal in the United States for chickens that produce eggs (and those sold for meat) to be given hormones. So all eggs meet this criteria, rendering the label meaningless.
No Added Antibiotics: This term means antibiotics were not used on the hens. Antibiotics are used to prevent and treat disease in chickens just like in humans, so if a chicken does need to be treated with antibiotics, it will no longer be used for eggs or meat. This label doesn’t indicate anything about how the chickens are raised, if they had access to the outdoors, or what they were fed.