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Comment by HeyLaughingBoy | Hacker News Reader

That's about right. Ever since I stopped raising chickens, I've been buying cage-free eggs. The price doesn't seem to have changed much over the last year and that is probably why they were selling out faster.

I just bought groceries yesterday, and checking the Walmart I went to, this site was accurate at least for that location.

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Here in Australia they use the term "free-range" and additionally publish the number of animals per land area (density). There's some pretty vicious things being sold as "free-range". I think "cage-free" is a scam also. You want the hard numbers.

Yeah New Zealand has the same distinction between cage free and free range eggs. The conditions for the "cage-free" ones are not much better than the caged ones - they just tweak the suffering to tick a box, I only buy free range.

Of course free range eggs aren't totally safe either, there's been a few scandals where a company has just lied about the conditions of the chickens entirely and gotten away with it for a worrying amount of time.

In the US "pasture raised" is the key phrase to look for. That means what most people think when they read "free range". Neither "cage free" nor "free range" means much in the US.

Cage free simply means they aren't in individual cages. ISTR that free range means there's an open door to the outdoors. But take any animal with flocking/herding behavior and if the group is inside, no more than one or two individuals will venture out for a few seconds before running back inside to the safety of the group.

I don't know of any large producers of pasture raised eggs. They all seem to be small, regional outfits, but then again, I haven't really looked hard.

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