07 January 2017 (14:20 UTC-07 Tango 06) 18 Dey 1395/08 Rabi ‘ath-Thani 1438/10 Ji Chou 4714

There’s been a campaign against true ‘free range’ poultry operations, including claims that true free range (basically raising poultry the old fashioned way and not in industrial cages) eggs are infected with salmonella, due to being exposed to environmental extremes like heat.

A researcher in Australia is challenging that claim: “…it has been assumed that hot weather has a role to play in the potential contamination of eggs at the site of free range egg production. We found that there was no direct association between hot weather and increased prevalence of Salmonella at the production stage…..  the types and levels of Salmonella found in and around free range egg farms is highly variable and often dependent on the specific management practices employed by each farm.”–Kapil Chousalkar, University of Adelaide  School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences

Having raised chickens myself in the Mojave Desert of California, when I was a child of the 1970s, I can promise you I never got no salmonella from their eggs even after they been sitin’ in the sun all day waitin’ for me to get home from school to collect them up.

However, just because a brand of eggs calls itself ‘free range’, or ‘organic’, doesn’t mean the chickens are allowed to roam free. Many industrial sized ‘free range’ poultry ops still force the poultry into crowded environments.

To counter what is essentially an industrial egg production marketing gimick, some true free rangers use the term Pasture Raised to indicate that the poultry are allowed to run free.

FOOD CRISIS JAPAN: BLACK SWAN DEATHS REVEAL BIRD FLU EPIDEMIC

“…LEAN TIMES FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD.” : U.S. FOOD CRISIS, NOVEMBER 2016