[PeanutNore]

Eliminating factory farmed meat from my diet is an aspirational thing for me; right now I don't have the available time or mental energy to commit to planning my diet to actually achieve that. Taking up deer hunting certainly helped me get closer to that goal, but mainly I just try to have no more than one serving of meat on any given day and go completely meatless several days a week.

[abdullahkhalids]

You can go and buy free range chicken meat at plenty of grocery stores - they are still not ideal from a animal suffering point of view, but its just a change that requires money, and rarely more.

Otherwise, look at the farmer's market at your local community center. A lot of them have close to ethically grown chicken meat.

[jbob2000]

Just so you know, free range is an industry term that doesn’t mean anything:

> The U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) requires that chickens raised for their meat have access to the outside in order to receive the free-range certification.[6] There is no requirement for access to pasture, and there may be access to only dirt or gravel . Free-range chicken eggs, however, have no legal definition in the United States. Likewise, free-range egg producers have no common standard on what the term means.

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_range . Basically “free range“ just means that the place where the chickens are housed has a door on it and that the chickens can use this door themselves. That’s it. There could be a fenced-in cement pad on the other side of the door, or it could be an open field, the standard doesn’t care.

[zdragnar]

> its just a change that requires money, and rarely more

Where are you getting your chicken? Around here, most free range that I've seen tends to be nearly double the cost.

[toasterlovin]

Rarely more than money (as in, not much time or effort), not rarely more money than.

[zdragnar]

Ah, thanks. Coffee's still kicking in.

One strange consequence of our food industry is that whole, uncooked chicken is more expensive than packages of just chicken breasts, and is the same price as a cooked rotisserie whole chicken all at the same store. Anything specialty, such as "organic" or free range, will add quite a bit on top of that.

[perl4ever]

Packages of uncooked chicken parts (breasts or thighs) at the grocery store in my experience vary a lot from day to day. I try to buy a large amount when it's on sale for under $2/lb, but depending on the day, brand, and size of package, you can easily spend double, maybe even triple without any particular benefit.

[toasterlovin]

Yeah, my research (several years old at this point) is that free range is like 50% more expensive than "normal" chicken and organic + free range is like double the price of "normal" chicken. So, yes, way more expensive.

[mattcaldwell]

While most city-dwellers can get free range meat easily, it can be near impossible in the country without driving long distances.

[wool_gather]

This does not match the experience of my friends and relatives who live in rural areas. It's not like this meat is coming from the city. It starts out in the country, and it can be found there. I think it's likely that there are more sources than you think nearby you, and not at any more of a distance than you already go for many other things.

[52-6F-62]

What? I grew up in a small town in the country and you get to know the butchers and farmers.

Now I'm from Canada where we have less in the way of factory farms, but all of the farmers I'd known preferred to have their cattle graze and chickens run the lot... that's the default.

(I know: as kids we used to sneak around the farmer's grazing fields and mess with the cow fences—see who could take the [mild] electric shock the longest by holding onto the wire...)

Maybe in places where they raise no animals at all—but I imagine that's relatively sparse in much of the continent. I'd have to look that up, mind you.

[JoeAltmaier]

??? I just go down to Bud's Meats, a locker in our small town. Get half a beef or a pig and put it in my freezer, raised on pasture by local farmers. Hand-raised lamb by Lois on her sheep farm.