Food with Free Range Chicken/Meat?

The lamb and brown rice formula by Blue Buffalo uses free range NZ lamb.  I don't think any of the other formulas are free range.

 Bravo is free range meat, or organic (depending on the formula). That's one of the big reasons I spend the money on it. It's a premade raw. A lot of vegans are kind of funny about raw meat, LOL, but... the Bravo Balance comes in 3 flavors, and it's packaged in 4 oz, individual baggie thingies. It's super easy to feed, especially if your dog is Emma, and needs 8 oz of food a day.

I've been making a mental list of pastured meat foods for the past few years... Blue buffalo lamb, Premium Edge lamb, Canidae claims theirs is grass fed, but it's USA lamb so I don't know how much I trust em. Nature's Variety lamb AND venison are both grass-fed. The buffalo and venison in taste of the wild is grass-fed but I don't think anything else in it is. I think california natural said their lamb was grass-fed. I would pretty much avoid turkey and chicken, because they are never going to be free range. Even if they are on pasture, they are still most likely put in those little chicken tractors and they can get very cramped. It is also my understanding that almost any venison, lamb, or beef from New Zealand or Brazil is grass-fed. Canine Caviar uses grass-fed venison. That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

I'm sort of vegan but I don't have much of a problem buying grass-fed meats. I like to leave the gross parts in the sink to thaw because it grosses out my meat-eating roommate, because all of the factory farmed meat he keeps in the fridge grosses ME out.

it's USA lamb so I don't know how much I trust em

Huh?  American lamb is the new sustainable meat eaters well-kept secret.  It's far easier to find range-raised lamb than it is to find grass-fed beef or pork, as a percentage.  Sheep are much better adapted to grass-based commercial operations, particularly in the west where most of our meat is grown.

Time for our recurring discussion of terms and how they apply to conscientious purchasers of meat.

• Organic.  This is a set of guidelines set forth by the USDA which include many, many loopholes for agribusiness.  It is very easy for agribusiness to meet these standards while not very much improving the living standards of the animals concerned, while it makes it pretty much impossible for a small farmer to meet them commercially (though you might find a hobby or subsistence farmer who follows organic guidelines for concience's sake).  Organic standards refer exclusively to "inputs" - ie, pharmaceuticals, food additives, and what type of food and forage is used to raise the animals (it has to be a certain percentage of organic as well).  Animals can still be raised in confinement and be "organic" though it's difficult.
• Free range.  This term is used in reference to animals usually grown in hothouse or cage environments in the US - poultry and pork.  Free range means, no more and no less, that the animals are offered increased space for movement including a minimum of fresh air, usually arranged by opening the side of the hothouse for the specified time.  No access to grass is actually required, in spite of the general perception behind this term, of happy chickens peacefully scratching around a lovely green pasture.  However, this is a HUGE improvement for things like commercial eggs, veal, and pork, so I do support free range products in those contexts.
• Grass fed. Another USDA dictated term, yay for them.  Anytime the government tells farmers what they can call their products, it supports agribusiness over small farmers.  I cannot ever call my lamb "grass fed" because the climate here requires me to feed more than the 20% maximum of non-forage inputs.  And yet I have a free-foraging-based program, which is what most people think of as being the point of grass fed products.  Grass fed does not imply organic, just as organic does not imply grass fed.  Nor does either imply true free range as most people think of it, believe it or not.  There's a "grass fed" operation near me where he brings in hay and the cattle stand in small lots stripped of grass - though the calves are weaned on stockpiled pasture.
• Pasture raised.  Most small farmers can claim this niche, thank goodness.  If you go look at a farm, the animals should be standing on grass (the ones intended for meat, and there are times of year I deliberately dry lot sheep as I mentioned because it would be cruel to try to force them to get nutrition exclusively from dormant grass, and I usually time "finish" on the lambs, and "flushing" on the ewes, for that time).

ETA: Tractors and hoop house have stocking rates of about 10% what confinement systems offer.  In other words, the animals have ten times the amount of space. 

Tractors move on a regular schedule based on the needs of the stock and the soil.  Tractors allow the stock access to food and a wide ranging space, for a far longer time than stock even is offered in pasture. 

The reason is that there is no competition for shade. If you look in a pasture for most of the day, you'll note that most of the stock are clumped in the small areas offered by shade. 

For small/quick finishing stock like poultry and pork, portable housing is a wonderful and sustainable way to raise livestock in a truly humane manner that is actually an improvement on nature.  The comparable system for larger livestock is MIG, management intensive grazing, also called rotational grazing.  But shade is a big problem for those of us who use MIG.

The brand that I feed my dog, Addiction, uses free-range NZ venison and lamb. Worth a try! My experiences with this food have been great so far.

I've never even heard of this food.  Can you give us some details on it?  Is it a product available in the US?

Addiction foods available at K9 Cuisine.  Wonderful formulas - the canned foods are really interesting and highly responsible and sustainable harvested meats.  They also have dehydrated foods, a good option (though spendy) for those who want to get away from cooked foods but are uneasy about real fresh raw. 

 I tried their dehydrated food. Emma puked it, every time I fed it to her. She's no indicator, though. Teenie did fine on it, then after she passed away, I gave a couple of boxes to a friend. Her dogs LOVED it. It smells amazing.

I looked up that Addiction food. It looks awesome. I ordered a couple cases of the possum. Obviously they are wild, but I wonder how they hunt them. I'd hate to think they use traps. Do you think they just shoot them?

 I also just discovered another free range food called Great Life that looks really good. It looks like all the meats they use are free roaming.

I would stay away from any beef or poultry products sourced in the US.  Most venison products, from my understanding are "free-range".   Nature's Variety and Natural Balance have Venison foods.

jenns

I would stay away from any beef or poultry products sourced in the US. 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I guess you are speaking about massed produced commercial food? Our current level of meat consumption, growing population and our demand for low prices is what fuels factory farming in America IMO. We must be willing to eat less meat and possibly pay farmers what it's actually worth in order to support small scale farming and move toward the sustainable practices most of us would like to see.

Thanks brookcove for the breakdown of terms. I think it's helpful. It all depends on what's important to each person although I sometimes wonder if people understand what they're asking for. I'd rather look for pasture raised than free range myself and hormone and antibiotic free is important to me too, which is where the term organic can be useful. When this was my grandparents' ranch (it's about 100 acres in the mountains), they raised free range turkeys. The old pictures are quite a sight.

Most beef cattle in the U.S. are born and raised on pasture, without hormones, extra antibiotics, chemical feed additives etc. The shift takes place after they mature and get sold to feedlots where they are crowded, given a hormone implant, stuffed with GM corn, and fed antibiotics until they're slaughtered. YIKES, this is the true cost of high consumption and demand for low prices. Make it profitable for the farmer to continue raising their livestock through the finishing phase, or provide alternative finishing outlets besides factory feedlots, and the shift will take place. Otherwise, find a farmer in your area and cut out the middle man.

Sorry for getting on my soapbox. I just hate what has become of small scale farming and how it has impacted our environment and the quality of our food.

CaliGrrrl

jenns

I would stay away from any beef or poultry products sourced in the US. 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I guess you are speaking about massed produced commercial food? Our current level of meat consumption, growing population and our demand for low prices is what fuels factory farming in America IMO. We must be willing to eat less meat and possibly pay farmers what it's actually worth in order to support small scale farming and move toward the sustainable practices most of us would like to see.

Thanks brookcove for the breakdown of terms. I think it's helpful. It all depends on what's important to each person although I sometimes wonder if people understand what they're asking for. I'd rather look for pasture raised than free range myself and hormone and antibiotic free is important to me too, which is where the term organic can be useful. When this was my grandparents' ranch (it's about 100 acres in the mountains), they raised free range turkeys. The old pictures are quite a sight.

Most beef cattle in the U.S. are born and raised on pasture, without hormones, extra antibiotics, chemical feed additives etc. The shift takes place after they mature and get sold to feedlots where they are crowded, given a hormone implant, stuffed with GM corn, and fed antibiotics until they're slaughtered. YIKES, this is the true cost of high consumption and demand for low prices. Make it profitable for the farmer to continue raising their livestock through the finishing phase, or provide alternative finishing outlets besides factory feedlots, and the shift will take place. Otherwise, find a farmer in your area and cut out the middle man.

Sorry for getting on my soapbox. I just hate what has become of small scale farming and how it has impacted our environment and the quality of our food.

What I meant was that it's hard to tell, given the ambiguity of claims made by the meat producers, whether the animals are truly free range or not.  This is more true in the US than in other countries, where our meat consumption, and demand for cheap meat, is higher than in other places.  Most New Zealand raised meat, for example, is almost always free range.  As for sustainability, I don't think that can ever be achieved with cattle farming, regardless of whether the cattle are free-range or factory farmed.  The amount of resources needed to create one unit of beef are just huge in comparison to other kinds of food.

I myself am a vegetarian, as I believe meat consumption is so harmful on so many levels, but of course I won't get into details as that's not the topic of this thread. 

 Actually, it's not true about the resources required to raise a unit of beef.  I know where you get that information and many of the assumptions used in those calculations are erroneous.

I respect vegetarians and their choices but I don't think it's necessary for great overall reduction in meat consumption, to achieve sustainable agriculture. 

Here's an article which explains this very well, written by a good friend of mine (a fellow shepherd, of course :) ): "Eat Red Meat and Save the Planet!"

Here's an excerpt:

Every acre of managed pasture and range absorbs greenhouse gasses. Grass based farming increases the organic matter in the soil, and this organic matter is largely carbon. The carbon comes from decaying plants, which obtained carbon by taking it out of the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, one of the most powerful greenhouse gasses. The management of cattle on pasture or range requires very little in the way of fossil fuel input. Pasture and range is generally not treated with chemical fertilizer. Low-horsepower vehicles (actual horses, in many cases) are used to check and round up cattle. Perhaps most importantly, the soil is not tilled.

He goes on to note that tillage oxidizes carbon into greenhouse gas - whether it's tilling to produce grain for those feedlots, or to support an increasing demand for cereals, legumes, and vegetables for a vegetarian population. 

Animals can be raised close to or within populated areas.  A single feeder calf, raised on an acre with his mother who also produces milk by the way, can support two to four families of four for a year, with some supplemental cereal and vegetables and fruit.  Ditto with six sheep or goats, or two pigs.   Mass horticulture requires large acreages - there's no getting around it.  Therefore while livestock can be processed and consumed within a hundred miles of the source, vegetable products require shipping to urban areas, storage, and marketing venues.

Sustainable livestock operations don't require chemical inputs.  Rotation of stock and forage species, provide a balance between nitrogen removal and fixing (clover and other legumes put nitrogen in the soil, in a process called "fixing";) in the way that existed on the prairies for millions of years before we arrived and plowed them all up for, um, crops.