If you go to , you have probably come across trays in the poultry section that carry, in different cuts, chicken classified as ‘free-range’ with a characteristic yellow (or orange) tone and at a higher price. A booming product due to the increase in its presence in restaurants in pursuit of a more sustainable production and which lives surrounded by a confusion with which the average consumer has not been able to end.
The European Commission regulation on the marketing of poultry meat does not make any distinction in terms of chickens. It only refers to the chicken within the group ‘domestic poultry’ which it shares with the cockerel and the hen, the capon, the chick and the cockerel, and does not make any subdivisions.
Of course, the aforementioned regulation qualifies that these products “may be completed with other terms, as long as they do not mislead the consumer” and establishes five possible terms that refer to the characteristics of the product: ‘Fed with…% of …’, ‘Extensive system in chicken coop’, ‘Coop with free outlet’, ‘Open-air farm’ and ‘Freedom breeding farm’. But, in global terms, the text is somewhat ambiguous and does not solve the confusion that exists around the names of chicken.
Coren, which marketed the ‘free-range chicken’ brand, assures that the big difference is in flavor, and that they meet the requirements of free-range chicken production
In 1995, the Galician company Coren began to market ‘free range chicken’, produced under the category of ‘free range chicken’. It obeys requirements such as the chickens being allowed out into the field, a 100% vegetable diet, specific space conditions in feeders and drinkers and a minimum rearing period of 57 days.
They are requirements to comply with those margins that recognize free-range chicken, which is regulated by European legislation. But the differences only translate in terms of taste and texture, the company claims. Coren assures that they are the only variations between that chicken and what could be called ‘traditional’. “Both meats are of the highest quality and sanitary guarantee”, they pray in the producer, who also reports that in both categories the use of antibiotics is dispensed with, that this characteristic yellowish color is due to the greater presence of corn in the diet of the animals and that there are no differences in terms of health as “poultry meat is the healthiest and healthiest of all”.
So why is this confusion taking place? Coren refers to the effect that already occurs with brands such as Nescafé or Avecrem, in which the product receives the name of the brand under which it is marketed and tends to be seen as the same whole.
FACUA defends that there are no differences between ‘free range chicken’ and the traditional one and that it is “a marketing trick” to sell the product at a higher price
For the consumer organization FACUA, it all comes down to “a marketing trick that misleads the consumer.” Its spokesman, Rubén Sánchez, attributes to this that the prices of these products, as elEconomista has consulted, are around two euros more expensive compared to traditional chickens on platforms such as El Corte Inglés, Alcampo or Carrefour.
Sánchez defends that there are hardly any differences in terms of food, that neither of them (the free-range and the traditional) are organic (they are sold at a higher price), that they have the same quality and that, for nutritional purposes, they are the same. “It is sold as of higher quality, but the nutritional value is the same,” he points out.
For the FACUA spokesperson, the denomination ‘corral’ constitutes “a game with a word that can convey a misleading idea to the consumer”. For this reason, he assures that “free-range chicken is nothing, it’s just chicken.” A confusion that, to this day, has not disappeared.
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