Free-range eggs?

Reader question:

In this sentence – Free-range eggs are much more expensive – what are free-range eggs exactly？

My comments:

Free-range eggs are kind of hard to explain.

I mean, it’s convoluted.

First off, free-range eggs can be chicken eggs or duck eggs or some other eggs on sale.

Let’s take chicken eggs as an example.

Free-range eggs are much more expensive because they’re different from caged-chicken eggs, i.e. eggs laid by chickens confined to a small cage.

Small cage?

Let me explain.

To improve production and efficiency, large chicken farms keep their birds in cages. This way, the chicken farm can raise a much greater number of birds in a given area.

Much greater number, that is, than if the birds are given free range.

“Range” refers to the distance within which something can be reached. Someone is shot from close range, for instance and that means the victim is shot from a short distance away instead of from afar.

“Free”, of course, refers to freedom.

Free-range chickens, therefore, are ones that are allowed to roam freely outside their cages – inside, say, a big, fenced field.

These chickens are allowed to move and exercise, so to speak, and are therefore stronger and healthier than those that are forced to crouch in a cage all day and night.

And after this crop of chickens are slaughtered and sold off, another group of baby chickens are jailed in the emptied cages.

Again, all day and night, throughout their own lifespan.

So on and so forth.

Sounds terrible, right?

It is terrible.

Anyways, when they’re sold, free-range chickens often fetch much better prices because they’re stronger and healthier. Their meat is considered tastier, too.

Free-range eggs, likewise – because they are laid by free-range chickens.

That’s why free-range eggs are much more expensive to buy.

Phew.

Like I said, it’s convoluted.

Now, let’s breathe a collective sigh of relief and read a few media examples of “free-range” in various contexts:

1. When you look at the label on a package of chicken or eggs, you’ll often encounter the term “free-range,” which describes the way the poultry bird was raised. You might picture hens frolicking around an idyllic green pasture all day, pecking at the ground to get at natural sources of feed. But is that really what the term “free-range” means?

The answer isn’t quite as photogenic as it might seem. The term, according to the USDA, simply means the chicken was allowed “continuous, free access to the outside.” And it only has to be for 51% of the chicken’s lifespan, too. This means that the majority of the chicken’s time could still have been spent indoors and in an enclosure, if not all of it. The bird would have simply been allowed some way to get to an outdoor space. But that practice can be loose – the quality of the outdoor space isn't specified, which means if a chicken only had access to a tiny rough patch of gravel, that still technically counts as free-range.

Realistically, the bird could still have existed in cramped, overcrowded areas, and so the term free-range might not exactly paint the entire picture of how it lived. The USDA doesn’t drop into farms to enforce the practice, and simply requires that a company fill the information out on a form. And that makes the whole practice potentially even more opaque. In the end, then, the term “free-range” isn’t necessarily a mark of high quality.

- What Does A Free-Range Label Actually Mean? TheTakeOut.com, October 28, 2024.

2. Sen. John Kennedy urged President-elect Donald Trump to come to Washington to help the House Republicans pass a spending deal as a potential government shutdown looms.

Capitol Hill has been thrust into chaos after Trump and his close advisor, tech billionaire Elon Musk, torpedoed a bipartisan spending agreement that would have kept the government funded through mid-March. Congressional leadership unveiled the agreement on Tuesday, but conservatives and Trump allies railed against the deal for including too much spending.

With just a slim majority in Congress, House Republicans would need to agree on a deal to avoid a partial government shutdown come Friday.

But Kennedy expressed little optimism Thursday on “FOX & Friends” that House Speaker Mike Johnson could unite the GOP House caucus by himself.

“If I were king for a day... here’s what I’d do. First, I would tell everybody to take their meds. Number two, I think President Trump is going to have to consider coming to Washington,” Kennedy said on Thursday. “Let’s face it, he’s the President now. It’s not President Biden. President Trump needs to sit down with Mike Johnson and John Thune and come up with a new skinny CR.”

“If the President wants to do something on the debt limit, we need to find out what it is and put it in the bill, and then the President is going to have to help Mike sell it in the House,” he added.

Musk spent most of Wednesday railing against the bipartisan spending agreement. Hours later, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance released a joint statement opposing the deal and demanding the House raise the debt ceiling before Trump takes office next month. While Musk and other Trump allies decried the legislation, Johnson spent most of Wednesday trying to defend the deal he helped negotiate.

Kennedy went on to compare some House Republican to “free-range chickens.”

“Speaker Johnson’s problem is that on the Republican side. He’s got a bunch of free range chickens. I’m not criticizing them, but they wander off, and Mike can’t catch all of them by himself,” he added.

When asked if Johnson could be Speaker, Kennedy reiterated that Johnson cannot control the Republicans.

“There’s one person that can control the Republican caucus in the United States House of Representatives right now, and that’s Donald J. Trump. That’s my best assessment at this point. Could that change, sure, but Speaker Johnson cannot,” he said.

- Senate Republican makes plea to Trump: We need your help, NJ.com, December 19, 2024.

3. You hear a lot about Democrats and Republicans being at odds, especially when it comes to family issues. But we are a Republican and a Democrat on exactly the same page when it comes to the issue of childhood independence.

We believe parents have the right to let their kids do some things on their own – like play outside or walk to the store – without fear of being investigated for neglect.

The issue came to our attention when reading Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, which recommends kids start doing more on their own, for their mental health. Then, just a few months ago, a Georgia mom got arrested because her 10-year-old took a walk to town without her knowing it. The mom was handcuffed in front of her kids and thrown in jail. Her story sparked outrage around the globe.

We share that outrage because we both grew up with a lot of unsupervised time, and it wasn’t because we were neglected. It’s because our parents trusted us, and knew that when kids do things on their own, they learn a lot of lessons – some of them tough – that they can’t learn with constant adult supervision.

Monique spent her first nine years in rural Missouri. She’d go outside and build forts with the other kids, pick flowers, and gather walnuts. At age nine, she moved to California, where there were giant games of Capture the Flag. She wasn’t particularly good at it, but she loved it.

Playing independently was just how kids were raised back then, and she doesn’t want to see that opportunity taken away. She gained confidence and responsibility from that freedom – and had a lot of fun. That’s a solid childhood!

For his part, Leonard grew up in Mobile, Alabama. He and his friends all wanted to be Evel Knievel, so they made bike ramps and spent a lot of time riding, jumping and falling off their BMX bikes. Then they’d go inside for Band-Aids, come out and do it all over again.

After school, the kids played touch football in the park or basketball behind a friend’s house. Sometimes, they’d challenge the kids from a couple of blocks away to a battle of the neighborhoods. All of this was organized by the kids. In the process, they learned how to negotiate, compete, lose, get back up and sometimes even win.

In between? They’d drink from the hose.

That’s something you don’t see a lot of anymore. And while the two of us realize you can’t bring back the ’80s, we teamed up to ensure that good parents don’t have to second-guess themselves whenever they think their kids are ready to do something on their own. That goes for the parents who deliberately want to let their kids “free-range.” And it goes for the parents in poverty, who often have no choice.

- Encouraging a free-range kid in Florida shouldn’t be a crime, TampaBay.com, April 21, 2025.

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）