The food industry has a wide range of terms, labels, and buzzwords that are used to draw in consumers. Oftentimes these labels can be misleading and cover up inconvenient realities.
1) Free-Range Poultry & Eggs- While this encourages thoughts of chickens roaming on spacious fields, the reality is often the opposite. To be “free-range” means the facility has provided access to the outdoors. Because there are no other criteria than an open door, many birds never even go outside! Crowded factory farms mean the animals often have about a foot of space, and if they do make it out the door it usually leads to a small yard saturated with manure.
2) Natural– This label is unregulated by the FDA and is highly misleading because of how nearly all packaged foods are processed. For meat and poultry, it often means no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives but does not tell consumers if antibiotics or hormones were used.
3) Organic– To be certified by the USDA it means 95% of the ingredients must have been frown with no pesticides, fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, or radiation were used. While this is important that a third-party (the USDA) is assessing and certifying a product as organic, some people may assume that all things organic are good to eat in whatever quantity they desire. This label can be misleading when the items are high in fat, sugar, and calories because it leads consumers to believe that the product is healthy or GMO-free. Additionally, the process makes it very difficult for small farmer’s to be certified organic.
4) Fair-Trade– Means farmers have safe working conditions, living wages, fair prices for crops, and that GMOs and pesticides are not used. Despite these goals, many of these factors are not fully achieved, particularly reducing poverty for the farmers involved. Also, incentives to grow cash crops like coffee often negatively impacts food security for the farmers and nearby community.
5) Cage-Free Poultry & Eggs- This means hens are not put in small wire cages, but they never go outside. Typical cage-free conditions mean dark, crowded buildings filled with toxic gases and rampant with diseases. Beyond this, the animals are put through inhumane practices such as debeaking, a painful face mutilation that prevents them from eating and preening properly. There are no federal laws protect chickens from abuse under any label.
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[…] For many consumers, these labels represent important social and environmental issues. While this is complicated but true, these categories also exist within a discourse that obscures the people behind these […]