In early September, the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service updated its guidelines for substantiating animal-raising and environment-related labeling claims to encourage companies to provide additional documentation demonstrating animal products sold with “pasture-raised,” “pasture-fed,” “pasture-grown” and “meadow-raised” comes from animals “raised on land where the majority is rooted in vegetative cover with grass or other plants for the majority of their life span from birth until slaughter.” The guideline clarifies this is not the same as “free-range,” which simply means animals have “continuous free access to the outdoors” throughout the grazing season but which does not require animals to ever leave a hutch or building.
The proposed change came at the behest of Perdue Farms, which is well known for its “No Antibiotics Ever” claim and other efforts to improve the welfare and living conditions for its chickens – a strategy that is equally rooted in empathy for animals as it is in business acumen given increased consumer interest in and willingness to pay a premium for poultry and meat from animals they perceive as treated more humanely.
In this episode of FoodNavigator-USA’s Soup-To-Nuts podcast, Ryan Perdue, a fourth generation Perdue family member and Senior Vice President of Perdue Premium Meats and Emerging Brands, shares what the new standard is, how it stacks up with other animal-raising claims and consumer expectations and what it means for stakeholders across the value chain from farmers to brands. He also shares new technologies and strategies to meet the tightened guideline and simultaneously improve animal-welfare and environmental-sustainability.
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What is the difference between ‘pasture raised’ and ‘free-range,’ and why is it important?
USDA’s updated guidance on substantiating animal-raising or environmental-related labeling claims proposed in late August responds to concerns that consumers were being misled by claims for which there is no federally codified definition, including “free-range” and “pasture-raised,” which Perdue Farms argued in a petition it submitted to USDA in March 2023 are not synonymous.
Perdue explains the company filed the petition after he began visiting farms seven years ago to learn more about “pasture-raised” and saw how it differs from other animal-raising claims.
“What I found is that there was a wide variety of different practices being employed. Some people were just letting them run completely out. Some were using a traditional stationary house and let the chickens have access to the outside,” he said.
“But,” he added, “what I was really excited about once I started looking around was that this is something in which actually a lot of people were participating – more in their backyard, small flocks selling at farmers’ markets. But there were, at the time, 700 different producers raising chickens that they called pasture-raised in a method consistent with a man by the name of Joel Salatin,” who developed a “chicken tractor” that moved chickens in an enclosure.
Many of these producers had joined forces to create the trade group American Pastured Poultry Producers Association, and they defined pasture-raised poultry as spending the majority of their lives on pastures that were covered in a majority of rooted vegetation – the basis for USDA’s new standard.
“The challenge was that this group has not been successful at really getting this adopted as the standard definition. They had been trying for almost a decade to get organizations, like the USDA, to adopt that definition and they just did not really know how to do that,” Perdue said.
This is where Perdue Farms could help given its experience submitting petitions to USDA for other animal care standards.
A standard definition is key to helping small farmers, brands succeed
Perdue argued that without USDA’s endorsement of this definition for poultry, there was a risk that some producers would make “pasture-raised” claims even though they actually adhered to the “lesser” “free range” standard. This not only created an uneven competitive playing field, but it could mislead consumers and generate distrust.
“I was really excited to find that there was this common definition that a lot of small producers were already pushing. What I also discovered at the same time, though, was that once you got into slightly larger producers, they were not employing that method. They were largely taking stationary houses that had outdoor access and calling that pasture-raised,” Perdue said.
Even Perdue Farms was guilty of this at one of its farms in Sonoma County that was top-rated for animal welfare, but which in spirit did not meet the definition of pasture-raised. Perdue said his first step was to discontinue the pasture-raised claims for poultry produced at that location.
How do consumers define pasture-raised vs free-range?
After getting its own house in order, Perdue said the company surveyed consumers to better understand what they believed “pasture-raised” meant versus other claims, like “free-range.” It then used those findings to support its petition asking USDA to differentiate the two claims.
“If you are going to go to a government agency, like USDA, and try to push forward a common definition, you need to have a really good understanding of what consumers currently believe,” said Perdue.
Perdue Farms conducted a survey and found 89% of consumers believe that an animal or product that is pasture-raised comes from an animal that should have spent at least some portion of its life on a pasture and 69% believe they should have spent the majority of their lives on a pasture, which was APPPA’s definition, Perdue said.
Some free-range chickens could meet this definition if they chose voluntarily to leave their enclosures, but Perdue explained most chickens when given a choice would stay within the safety of the enclosure where there is food and water and never venture outside.
By distinguishing between the two terms, Perdue says there is more security for small and medium farmers to command a premium when they raise chickens on the pasture and less risk of greenwashing.
Likewise, by clearly defining pasture raised, Perdue says consumers who buy chicken making the claim can be more confident in its nutritional quality and the benefits of the claim for the land.
Given the benefits for pasture-raised practices and the protection the new USDA guideline affords poultry farmers who follow them, Perdue says he is optimistic more poultry producers will elevate their systems to meet the higher claim, which he says is a win for animals, people, the planet and business.