Topic SA investigates the "free range" in Elgin Free Range Chickens

Elgin Free Range Chickens was founded by Jeanne Groenewald and has been operating since 1997. They have an average of 768,000 chickens at any one time spread over their seven farms which are located in the Overberg area in the Western Cape.

Elgin has their own abattoir in Grabouw where they slaughter 130,000 chickens per week.

What is the definition of ‘free range’ in South Africa?

The term “free range” may conjure up images for the consumer of an animal living in wide open spaces able to roam freely about and eating natural foods but locally, the legal application of the term is rather limited.

These South African regulations do not specify any details about the “continuous daytime access” to outside which means that there are no industry guidelines and the rule has the potential to be abused.

Elgin Free Range Chickens informed TOPIC (Testing of Products Initiated by Consumers) that no government department currently monitors or audits free range farming in South Africa. Two of TOPIC SA team members visited one of the Elgin Free Range Chickens’ farms in Caledon on the 3rd of June.

,Photos from TOPIC’s farm visit to Elgin

Elgin reported that they purchase the broiler chicks when they are a day old and they are immediately placed in their chicken sheds. The shed we observed was 15m wide by 135m long and housed 32,000 birds (see pictures above). This shed had a total of 45 popholes spaced 3m apart on both sides for the chickens to access the outside area. The popholes are 3m wide by 0.75m high and were open. Elgin told them that they are then closed again at night and in bad weather. As their visit was in winter, it was a cold day and despite the pop-holes being open, most of the 14 day old birds were huddled inside together for warmth.

This shed had a size-matching 15m wide by 135m long outside area that was covered in shade cloth to offer the chickens protection from predators and wild birds. This is Elgin’s new design idea that they are starting to implement and told them they will be rolling out for all their sheds in the future. On the other side of the shed, the pop-holes opened onto another free range area which was uncovered and allowed the birds to range even further.

Photos supplied by Elgin Free Range Chickens of the birds accessing the outside areas in warmer weather.

Regular farm inspections and auditing

All seven of the farms that are raising chickens for Elgin Free Range Chickens are audited by an independent company, which is a Woolworths initiative, and is conducted on a bi-annual and unannounced basis. Elgin Free Range Chickens also conducts internal audits by certified auditors as part of supplier control to the ISO 22000:2005 Food Safety Management system and regular unannounced farm visits are conducted by the Agricultural Manager, the MD and CEO of the Elgin Free Range Chickens, and the group’s veterinarian.

Credit to Topic SA. For full article visit http://topicsa.org.za/blog/elgin-free-range-chickens/

Our comments:

Free-range broilers are, like other broilers, bred for such high meat production that the birds are unable to move about freely even if they want to. Crippling, painful skeletal deformities is usually the product of genetic manipulation that drastically increase breast and thigh tissue and produce a very rapid growth rate that outstrips the development of their legs. Majority of these chickens never make it to the outside due to their under developed legs that are unable to carry them.

Ethical egg farming does exist

Farmer Eddie

Farmer Eddie is pioneering a partnership between a group of certified organic citrus farms with the highest calibre of pasture and healthy laying hens. The relationship between grass, fertile organic soil and the potential it offers to give the chickens the healthiest pasture, resulting in the highest quality eggs.

The expanse of the organic citrus orchards offers up an incredible grazing space in one of the most perfect environments for laying hens. Each area is fenced off to provide 1500 m2 of safe free-range pasture to only 300 chickens. The night-time roosting caravans are opened in the morning to give the chickens unlimited access to lush green grazing under the shade of organic citrus trees.

Farmer Eddie’ Ferreira has added another dimension to the orchards of The Soga (Sundays Organic Growers Association) group of certified organic citrus farms with his hens.

Eddie and Johnny Ferreira are brothers who through a series of health and life challenges developed a passion for healthy living through healthy food. After the pain of losing their sister to cancer rather swiftly, the urge to farm healthier food divorced from the chemical reality of modern agriculture developed, and the courage of following heart and belief no matter the cost.

Eddie warmly describes the flood of relief when he got his first certificate back that confirmed the feed to be entirely non-GM, always a nerve-racking time for a committed farmer as GMO’s contaminate so much of life, a source of great misery and turmoil for the organic hearts and souls amongst us. It isn’t easy to get a 100% pass on non-GM input and for this reason, it is the ultimate confirmation that your feed sourcing was successful. https://farmereddie.co.za/

Jo’s Pasture Raised Food

Jo’s pasture raised hens are completely free range and roam around happily all day in fresh pastures.

Jo’s farm

All their animals are raised ethically and honestly, free from antibiotics and growth promoters, with access to grass and sunlight all day. Their eggs are produced by very happy healthy hens, roaming free all day in lush and vibrant pastures that are situated on our farm in Harrismith, South Africa.

The hens sleep and lay in their mobile trailers which are regularly moved to fresh pastures. Also known as hen mobiles or chicken tractors, due to the way the chickens progressively work the lands by scratching about, spreading manure and eating parasites. At night, safe and warm in their trailer on their wooden perches, they fertilize the lands with their litter.

“My goal has always been to feed my family in the most healthy and ethical way possible. As a family we produce our own food which also teaches our children about humane farming. Jo’s pasture raised food now supplies other people who also believe in holistic living. I strongly believe we need to honor, respect and appreciate the life that goes into our food. Intensive farming systems overlook the ecological benefits that holistic farming is based on.”

~Jo Spilsbury

https://www.jospastureraisedfood.co.za/about-free-range-chicken-eggs

The Evolution of Diet

Scientists still have plenty of unanswered questions about the origins and evolution of human meat-eating, but there are some strong theories as to when, how and why we started to incorporate larger amounts of meat in our omnivorous diet.

DEAD END / Photo credit to CHRISTOPHER DOMBRES

The race to extinction. Illustration made in 2007.Between 2.6 and 2.5 million years ago, the Earth got significantly hotter and drier. Before that climate shift, our distant human ancestors—collectively known as hominins—were subsisting mostly on fruits, leaves, seeds, flowers, bark and tubers. As the temperature rose, the lush forests shrank and great grasslands thrived. As green plants became scarcer, evolutionary pressure forced early humans to find new sources of energy. Our ancient hominin ancestors weren’t capable hunters yet, but likely scavenged the meat from fallen carcasses. Once humans shifted to even occasional meat eating, it didn’t take long to make it a major part of our diet. Zaraska says there’s ample archaeological evidence that by 2 million years ago the first Homo species were actively eating meat on a regular basis.

The grassland savannas that spread across Africa supported growing numbers of grazing herbivores. Archaeologists have found large herbivore bones dating from 2.5 million years ago with telltale cut marks from crude stone tools. Our ancient hominin ancestors weren’t capable hunters yet, but likely scavenged the meat from fallen carcasses.

While our ancient human relatives had stronger jaws and larger teeth than modern man, their mouths and guts were designed for grinding up and digesting plant matter, not raw meat. Even crude stone tools could function as a second set of teeth, stripping hunks of flesh from a zebra carcass or bashing open bones and skulls to get at the nutrient-rich marrow or brains inside. By pre-processing meat with tools originally designed to dig tubers and crack open nuts, our ancestors made animal flesh easier to chew and digest.

Meat was the original ‘brain food.’

When ancient hominins subsisted exclusively on fruits, plants and seeds, they expended a lot more energy on digestion. Millions of years ago, the human gut was longer and slower, requiring more effort to derive limited calories from forage foods. With all of that energy being spent on digestion, the human brain remained relatively small, similar to other primates today.

When humans began adding meat to their diet, there was less of a need for a long digestive tract equipped for processing lots of plant matter. Slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years, the human gut shrunk. This freed up energy to be spent on the brain, which grew explosively in size.

When humans began cooking meat, it became even easier to digest quickly and efficiently, and capture those calories to feed our growing brains. The earliest clear evidence of humans cooking food dates back roughly 800,000 years ago, although it could have begun sooner.

Chakazul, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Humans continue to eat meat because we like it, not because we need it.

Meat was clearly pivotal in the evolution of the human brain, but that doesn’t mean that meat is still an irreplaceable part of the modern human diet. Zaraska says any calorie-dense food would have had the same effect on our ancient evolving brains—“it could have been peanut butter”—but that meat happened to be available.

We crave meat today, in part, because our brains evolved on the African savanna and are still wired to seek out energy-dense sources of protein. It’s similar to our penchant for sugar, a rare calorie-rich commodity to our foraging ancestors whose brains rewarded them for finding ripe fruit.

But we also crave meat because of its cultural significance. Different cultures are more or less meat-centric, although there’s a clear correlation between wealth and meat consumption. Industrialized Western nations average more than 220 pounds of meat per person per year, while the poorest African nations average less than 22 pounds per person.

An overly meaty diet has been linked to heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers—things our distant ancestors never had to worry about, because they didn’t live long enough to fall victim to chronic disease. “The goals of life for our ancestors was very different than ours,” says Zaraska. “Their goal was to survive to the next day.”

For the full article, visit https://www.history.com/author/dave-roos