Organic/Free Range

Don’t be misled by packages of meat, eggs, and dairy “products” with pictures of happy animals running near quaint country barns and reassuring labels proclaiming “organic” or “free-range.” Animals on typical organic and “free-range” farms often spend much of their time confined to crowded sheds or mud-filled pens, just as animals on conventional factory farms do.

Animals on organic and “free-range” farms often endure the same cruel mutilations—such as debeaking, dehorning, and castration without painkillers—as animals on conventional factory farms. Cattle, for example, generally have their horns cut off and their testicles cut out of their scrotums, and many are branded with searing-hot irons. Pigs on organic farms often have their tails cut off and their ears notched, and some have rings forced into their sensitive noses in order to prevent them from rooting in the grass and dirt, which is a favorite pastime of pigs. Chickens on organic egg farms usually have part of their sensitive beaks cut off, which causes them both acute and chronic pain.

At the end of their miserable lives, these animals are typically shipped on trucks through all weather extremes—usually without food, water, or rest—to the same slaughterhouses used by factory farms. There, the animals are hung upside down and their throats are cut, often while they’re still conscious and struggling to escape. Many chickens are still able to feel pain when they’re submerged in the scalding-hot water of the defeathering tanks, and cows may be conscious as their bodies are hacked apart.

Source: PETA.org "The Organic and ‘Free-Range’ Myths"
Suggested Reading: No Happy Cows: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Food Revolution by John Robbins