Chicken is the most consumed meat in the United States, yet most Americans don’t know much about what they’re eating. While many consumers can debate the merits of grass-fed vs grain-fed beef and distinguish between Angus and Wagyu breeds, few can identify Cornish Cross vs Color Yield chicken or explain the pros and cons of soy-free feed. This guide is here to help.

Most grocery store chicken is a Cornish Cross breed raised in an indoor warehouse on a diet of conventional GMO feed of corn, soy, and wheat. These birds are harvested at 5 weeks, and if they weren’t harvested at that age they wouldn’t be healthy enough to live past it. Their legs are not strong enough to support their breast-heavy body composition, and they drag their feathers on the ground. It’s not good animal welfare, it’s not a healthy chicken, and it’s not a nutritious chicken to consume. We can do better.

If chicken is America’s favorite protein, then a great grocery store must source great chicken. Standard grocery store chicken? Not good. Farmer’s market chicken? Slight improvement. There’s chicken that transcends both in welfare, nutrition, and flavor. Welcome to the Radius Guide to Better Chicken. 

Our goal at Radius Butcher & Grocery is to source the most nutritious and delicious local food. This guide summarizes our research to identify farming practices that lead to nutrient dense chicken. Nutrition is key, and it has to taste good too — following this research, we did tastings for flavor (video coming soon!) to choose which Central Texas chicken to source at Radius.

If you live in Central Texas and can shop at Radius, we hope this guide helps you understand how we selected our chicken farms and the level of care we put into sourcing. If you don’t live nearby, we hope it helps find the best chicken near you. The practices we look for in nutrient dense chicken are:

1. Diet: Organic traceable feed complemented by forage and organic farm scraps
2. Lifestyle: Raised outdoors in a biodiverse ecosystem 
3. Breed: A slow-growth breed like a Pioneer or Freedom Ranger
4. Age: Harvested at 8-10 weeks to allow the chickens to develop strong bones and a healthy immune system that support muscle growth, nutrition, and flavor
5. Processing: Air-chilled after harvest rather than water-chilled

Read on to learn more about the 5 qualities to look for in great chicken, why a chicken’s diet is the most important factor, and why we decided to partner with a local farmer to raise a chicken breed specifically for Radius.  

A Brief History of Chicken

Before diving into the domesticated chicken of today, it’s helpful to understand where chicken came from. There are three important chicken epochs — wild chicken, domesticated chicken, and industrialized chicken. 

• Wild Chicken: The domesticated chicken is a descendant of the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus), a small, wild bird native to Southeast Asia. At some point it was likely bred with the Gray Junglefowl (Gallus sonneratii) of India, which gives domesticated chicken its yellow skin color. These Junglefowl are tree-loving jungle birds, omnivorous hunters of insects, seeds, fruits, small animals, and green plants, and highly active. Here’s a video of what Junglefowl look like. Quite a bit different than a broiler chicken found in a commercial setting today. 
• Domesticated Chicken: Junglefowl were domesticated ~7,000 years ago and have been selectively bred ever since to be easier to raise and more efficient meat producers. Early domesticated chickens would roam around farms and actively forage for insects, seeds, and vegetation. Due to their unique digestion system and omnivorous behavior, chickens had a very clear role on the farm as food processors to convert kitchen and farm waste into future meat and eggs. Chickens are the original trash compactors. 
• Industrialized Chicken: In 1948, the “Chicken of Tomorrow” contest sponsored by the American grocery food chain A&P had one goal — create a chicken breed that grew faster and at half the cost. The Cornish Cross won the competition, and has provided Americans with cheap, consistent meat ever since. Chickens’ diets changed dramatically around this time, moving from farm scraps and regional feed to industrial feed of grain, corn, and soy with high likelihood of GMOs. 

While the efficiency of chicken production over the last hundred years has been a modern miracle to increase yield and reduce prices, we think it has gone too far at the expense of animal welfare, nutrient density, and flavor. We’re on the hunt for nutritious and delicious chicken that is closer in diet and lifestyle to its domesticated ancestors. 

The Link Between Chicken Health and Human Health

We are what we eat eats. The nutrients that chickens consume in their daily diet directly affects the nutrients in their meat, and thus the nutrients we consume when eating chicken. And not all chicken is nutritionally equal. If a chicken consumes a lot of inflammatory omega-6s in their feed, their meat will contain it too. If a chicken consumes a lot of beta-carotene in their diet, their meat and eggs will contain it too. If a chicken runs around foraging, that exercise will make it healthier. When we eat chicken, we eat a concentration of their diet and lifestyle.

Which chicken do you think is more nutritionally healthy — one that hunts each day for a range of food, or one that sits inside every day and eats the same processed feed? The “couch potato” chicken will consume a lot of calories and get essential vitamins and minerals, but it will miss the nutrient-rich and flavor-producing phytochemicals found in natural grasses, insects, and seeds. The pastured chicken foraging every day will have a much more nutrient rich and diverse diet, and the exercise of foraging brings more blood flow and myoglobin into their muscle meat. Even if foraging contributes 10% of a chicken’s calorie intake, the act of foraging is essential for exercise, a more diverse diet, and based on our taste test experience — flavor too. There’s a reason why dark meat has more flavor than white meat — it is a more used muscle that contains more nutrients. 

Differences in diet and exercise levels between pastured chickens and conventional chickens impacts the nutrient density of the meat. Pasture-raised chickens have a superior nutritional profile.

• Higher protein and lower fat (Sales 2014, Poultry Science)
• Higher concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids and a lower ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 (Ponte 2008, Poultry Science and Gorski 2000, APPPA)
• Higher levels of flavor-producing compounds like carotenoids, tocopherols, and flavonoids (Dal Bosco 2016, Poultry Science)
• Likely higher levels of vitamins A, D, E, antioxidants like beta-carotene, and minerals like iron, zinc, and selenium. Surprisingly there are only a few studies on the impact of pasture on these vitamin, antioxidant, and mineral levels in chicken meat (Gorski 2000), but there are more studies on the effect of pasture on these levels in eggs (Penn State 2010). It’s likely safe to assume that higher levels in pasture-raised eggs would also apply to the meat too. 

So why should you eat pasture-raised chicken? The chickens have a healthier diet and lifestyle, which leads to more nutritious meat that is better for you. As listed before, the specific nutrient-building practices we look for in sourcing chicken are:

1. Diet: Organic traceable feed complemented by forage and organic farm scraps
2. Lifestyle: Raised outdoors in a biodiverse ecosystem 
3. Breed: A slow-growth breed like a Pioneer or Freedom Ranger
4. Age: Harvested at 8-10 weeks to allow the chickens to develop strong bones and a healthy immune system that support muscle growth, nutrition, and flavor
5. Processing: Air-chilled after harvest rather than water-chilled

Now let’s dive into each factor and what to look for when sourcing the best chicken. 

Diet

If we are what we eat eats, then a chicken’s diet is the most important factor for sourcing high quality meat. Chicken diets are a combination of feed and forage. Feed is a processed mix of carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, and minerals — think of it like dry pet food for chickens. Forage is made up of the grasses, insects, seeds, and other natural elements on pasture. Conventionally raised, mass produced chickens only eat processed feed. Pasture-raised chickens eat a combination of feed and forage. 

Even pasture-raised chickens get the vast majority of their calories from feed. If you read a sentence from a chicken farmer like “Alongside the food they forage, our birds receive supplemental feed,” it is misleading. All domesticated chicken has been bred over generations to have high metabolisms and are dependent on energy dense feed. Feed is the core of a domesticated chicken’s calorie intake, and any forage is supplemental. It is not “supplemental feed”, just feed. Foraging is still important though; both for exercise and diet diversity. 

Since feed is the core calorie source, its composition is very important. Chickens need carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, and minerals to develop healthy bone structure, immune system, and muscle meat. There are many possible sources for these macro and micronutrients in forage and feed. 

• Carbohydrates: Corn, wheat, barley, oats, sorghum
• Protein: Soybeans, peas, flax, fish meal, alfalfa, sunflower, canola, insects
• Vitamin and mineral supplements: Calcium, salt, milk, herbs
• Vitamins and minerals from foraging: Grass, plants, insects, and fruits 
• Vitamins and minerals from kitchen and farm scraps: Cabbage, cucumber, melons, strawberries, kale, fruit and vegetable peels
• Fermentation: Just like in humans, fermentation makes vegetation easier to digest for chickens

There are many possible feed ingredients, but what should consumers look for? 

1. All of the ingredients should be organic with clear traceability from farm to mill. If you only eat organic produce to avoid pesticides and herbicides, the same should be true for what you eat eats. Organic certification means no GMO, no chemicals, and no synthetically derived minerals. (All vitamins are synthetically derived, but some are certified for organic use depending on how they are synthesized). The feed ingredients should have clear traceability from where they are grown to where they are milled to ensure they adhere to standards. Ideally the ingredients should be regionally attuned too — meaning for chicken raised in Texas, the carbohydrate source in their feed should be from a crop that grows well in Texas like sorghum. While a chicken raised in Minnesota could get their carbohydrates from wheat. 
2. Low Omega 6. “Low PUFA” is becoming a popular marketing term, but it’s not precise enough and even misleading. Really it should be “Low Omega 6” and here’s why. PUFA is an acronym for polyunsaturated fats, which comprises both Omega 6 and Omega 3 fatty acids. This guide is a nice overview on the chemical and health differences between Omega 6 and Omega 3 essential fatty acids. Both are necessary for a balanced diet, but humans consume a much higher proportion of Omega 6 in modern diets. Some health researchers argue that a high ratio of O6:O3 is bad for heart health and inflammation, while others say the ratio doesn’t matter and it’s more important to just increase O3. Either way, the solution is the same — replace high Omega 6 ingredients with high Omega 3 ingredients in your diet and in the diets of animals we consume since we are what we eat eats. For example, corn has a high O6:O3 ratio, and there are many good carbohydrate source alternatives (wheat, barley, sorghum) with a more balanced proportion. This means when sourcing chicken, corn-free is a good idea. This will lower the amount of O6 and increase the amount of O3 in a chicken’s diet, which will change the ratios in the meat as well. To sum up, we want PUFAs in our diets; we just want less Omega 6 PUFA and more Omega 3 PUFA. Modern diets are high in Omega 6 and low in Omega 3 because of the amount of Omega 6s in seed oils and processed foods, so replace Omega 6 ingredients with Omega 3 ingredients to raise your Omega 3 intake. While the rationale behind reducing Omega 6s makes sense, we’re a bit wary of any highly specific diet and nutrition trends like low-PUFA. It’s more important to internalize the core insight than the marketing buzz. And the core insight for low-PUFA is that highly processed foods like seed oils create unhealthy concentrations of compounds that we would never be exposed to in nature. Be wary of highly processed products, in both your diet and in what you eat eats. 
3. Soy-free is debatable, and it depends on the protein replacement for soy. There are three concerns with soy — the first is GMO soy is sprayed with chemicals, but if you have organic feed then it’s not an issue. The second concern is soy contains isoflavones, a type of plant estrogen. Higher estrogen levels are linked to cancer risk, but isoflavones are structurally different from the estrogen in our bodies, and plant-based estrogen does not convert into the estrogen our bodies make when we eat it. Isoflavones do not drive cancer growth the same way that our own estrogen does. That said, the amount of soy consumed by a chicken eating the same feed every day is way more concentrated than a human having a few servings of soy beans a week. The third concern is that soy has a high O6:O3 ratio, which as described above is not ideal. If soy is replaced as the protein source in chicken feed, it’s important that the replacement doesn’t have a higher O6:O3 ratio than soy itself. Flax and alfalfa are great alternatives. Sunflower and canola products have significantly higher Omega 6 levels, and peas are about the same. Fishmeal can have issues (heavy metals, microplastics, difficult traceability, fishy chicken) if not sourced well. In conclusion, be careful with “soy-free”, as the protein replacement may be worse than the soy itself.

If you can only ask a chicken farmer about one topic, ask about their chickens’ diets. What do your chickens eat? Where do you source your feed and what’s in it? What percent of their calories come from feed versus forage? Ideally the farmer has thoughtful, deep answers to how they source or even grow their chicken feed ingredients. And the feed should be supplemented with seeds, grasses, and insects that the birds forage on pasture plus organic farm and kitchen scraps for additional micronutrients. 

Lifestyle

Chickens can be raised many different ways — pastured, cage-free, free-range, contained. Many of these terms have been greenwashed and lost their meaning. For Radius, we are only interested in true pastured chicken - meaning they are outside every day. Pastured animals will have better nutrition because of a more diverse diet of insects, seeds, and vegetation and better muscle and fat development due to space to run around. 

There are a few different ways to pasture a chicken, each with trade-offs. All of these are good options and mostly depend on the specific landscape and farm. 

All of these pasture shelters are good options, and certainly much better than indoor warehouses. Where pastured chicken operations can really differentiate themselves is first by the type of land the chickens are raised on and second by including them in a regenerative agricultural system. 

For the landscape, chickens are descendents of jungle birds and like having a protective and shaded canopy. Ideally the chickens are raised on land with trees like at Tree Range or dense crops such as sorghum like at the former Cooks Venture. These landscapes would make moving sleds difficult, so fixed coops that get 30-60 days of rest between flocks would be appropriate housing. 

Breed

Broiler chickens are raised for meat, and there are a lot of broiler breeds. You wouldn’t know it though, as one breed dominates the American market — the Cornish Cross. This breed has been optimized for high yield and low cost, at the expense of animal welfare, nutrition, and flavor. However, its reign may be coming to an end. 

There have been two recent scientific initiatives to understand the effects of chicken breed on welfare and meat quality. The Better Chicken Commitment conducted by a group of nonprofits and the Better Chicken Project, funded by the Global Animal Partnership of Whole Foods and conducted by the University of Guelph. Both studies concluded that conventional Cornish Cross breeds have significant issues and are not recommended. From the Better Chicken Commitment:

The vast majority of conventional breeds produce meat with visible muscular myopathies, including white striping (92.4%) and woody breast (42.4%), which lower meat quality. Up to 37% of conventional breeds suffer from lameness (the inability to walk properly), as opposed to only 10% of the slower-growing breeds.

The studies identified breeds that have much higher animal welfare, and signed commitments from companies like Starbucks, Burger King, Chipotle, Nestle, Papa Johns, and more to only source those breeds. To repeat — these companies are committed to no longer source Cornish Cross chickens because of poor animal welfare, high rates of muscular myopathies, and poor nutrition. Whether or not these companies actually follow through on this commitment is yet to be seen, but as an educated consumer you should not be eating Cornish Cross chicken, and instead should be eating slower growing breeds like Pioneers, Redbros, and Color Yields that are able to develop strong bones and immune systems before putting on weight. These birds have much better lives, less health issues, and better meat quality. 

Age 

A chicken’s age at harvest is determined by how long it takes to get to market weight. If a chicken has a low feed conversion ratio (the pounds of feed required to put on one pound of weight) and given a lot of calorie dense feed, it will take less time to get to market weight. Conventionally raised, warehoused, feed-only chickens can get to market weight in just 5 weeks. Slow growth chickens need more time to reach market weight and require 8 - 12 weeks depending on breed, diet, and lifestyle. 

There are trade-offs on short versus long grow-out periods. A chicken with a short grow-out period will be less expensive since it requires less feed, but it will be less healthy since its caloric intake goes towards muscle growth rather than immune system or skeletal development. Cornish Cross chickens raised in conventional farms can’t live beyond their harvest date anyways because their bone structure wouldn’t be developed enough to support their weight. A longer grow out period allows the chicken to develop a strong foundation, develop nutritional density, and develop flavor. A longer grow out period is our preference. 

Processing

The most nutrient and flavor-impacting step of processing is whether a chicken is air chilled or water chilled after harvest. Air chilling is preferred — water chilling both draws out nutrients, and draws in water - a double sided attack that reduces nutrient density and degrades texture. Additionally chemicals are added to the water bath to prevent bacterial spread, and those chemicals end up in the chicken. Air chilling takes longer and is more expensive, but leads to a much better final product. 

Comments on “Regenerative Chicken” 

Chickens are magnets for marketing buzzwords. Regenerative is the newest one, but it’s probably not accurate when applied to chicken. Regenerative means the agricultural practice gives more than it takes and improves the soil in the process. To understand regenerative in the context of chicken, it’s important to think about it in two dimensions — the land the chickens are raised on and the land their feed is grown on. The chicken land can be regenerative, but the feed land rarely is. And feed land takes up way more space than chicken land; every 1 acre of pasture raised chicken takes about 40 acres of feed land (calculation in appendix below).

For the chicken land, the soil is regenerated by the birds as they scrape up dirt and fertilize with their manure. However, all chicken is dependent on feed, and that feed consumes vast swaths of land to grow corn, soy, wheat, peas, etc. For chicken to be truly regenerative, the feed would need to be grown in a regenerative system too. 

Not requiring feed is the regenerative advantage of ruminants over monogastric animals. Sheep and cattle are ruminants, meaning they have a four-chambered stomach designed for fermenting large quantities of grass. Ruminants can live on grass alone and require no supplemental inputs. Their action of grazing fields fertilizes the soil, encourages native grasses, and creates a closed regenerative system. Ruminants foster perennial grass, perennial grass fosters ruminants. Food can be a byproduct of conservation and healthy ecosystems; it can give more than it takes. We want to aspire to the same regenerative goals with chicken.

Chickens (and pigs, and humans) are monogastric animals, meaning they have a single-chambered stomach that digests food through enzymatic breakdown. That means chickens are omnivorous and can eat almost anything, but their stomachs cannot digest enough grass to live on grass alone. Chickens require more calorie dense, less fibrous foods beyond grass and those calorie sources come from feed. Even Joel Salatin, the ultimate regenerative advocate, gives his chickens feed.

So what would it take for chicken to be regenerative? In many ways, it means returning domesticated chickens to where they started — waste composters that are part of a mixed farm system. Harness the chicken’s incredible digestion system to solve waste issues versus create input issues. Here are some concepts to make chicken more regenerative by reducing feed input requirements: 

• Reduce calories from feed by creating environments with plentiful forage. This likely requires raising chickens in a system with ruminants. Ruminants encourage native grass growth, ideal insect habitats that the chickens then eat. The farm might have cattle graze a specific pasture, and then move chickens to that area after so that the chickens can eat insects living in the grasses, seeds, and grasses left by the ruminants. The more calories a chicken can consume from foraged insects, the less it will need from feed. 
• Use meat byproducts as feed. Chickens are omnivorous descendants of dinosaurs. They are natural meat eaters, and giving grass-fed byproducts like suet and liver to chickens can significantly improve the nutrient profile of their meat and eggs. There is a lot of meat left on animal carcases, and chickens can pick that clean. While some consumers might be nervous about chickens eating meat due to past health crises like mad cow, remember that chickens are naturally omnivores while cattle and ruminants are not. The more calories a chicken can consume from safe, upcycled agricultural products, the less it will need from feed.  
• Use farm byproducts as feed. Chickens love vegetables too. Chickens can clean crop fields after they’ve been harvested, or eat vegetables that aren’t nice enough for the market (bruises, bugs, etc). More calories from farm products, less from feed.
• Grow feed on the farm. If the forage, meat byproducts, and farm byproducts aren’t enough calories, then feed ingredients can be grown on the farm. This can be the standard carbohydrates (wheat, barley, sorghum, etc) and protein (alfalfa, flax, peas, etc) as well as more novel innovations like raising black soldier fly larvae.
• Source regenerative feed ingredients. And if the above still don’t have enough calories, source regeneratively grown feed ingredients from regional farms. Cover crops like peas are particularly good. 

At Radius we believe in regenerative agriculture where a farm’s outputs are equal to or greater than the inputs. As said in the beginning, at Radius we’re on the hunt for chicken that is closer in diet and lifestyle to its domesticated ancestors. That means they are glorified garbage processors that take farm scraps and agricultural byproducts and turn them into meat and eggs.  

While we believe it is possible to create a closed, regenerative system where the chickens and feed ingredients are raised on the same land, we haven’t been able to find such a chicken farm. But we are searching for it and will collaborate with farmers to make it happen.

Radius Chicken

Here is a recap of the qualities we look for in the best chicken:

1. Diet: Organic traceable feed complemented by forage and organic farm scraps
2. Lifestyle: Raised outdoors in a biodiverse ecosystem 
3. Breed: A slow-growth breed like a Pioneer or Freedom Ranger
4. Age: Harvested at 8-10 weeks to allow the chickens to develop strong bones and a healthy immune system that support muscle growth, nutrition, and flavor
5. Processing: Air-chilled after harvest rather than water-chilled

What chicken will we source at Radius? For Radius, the “Platonic Chicken” offering is:

Core Offering

• Breed: Pioneer 
• Lifestyle: Rotated daily on pasture in a moveable coop
• Diet: Organic feed from a local mill with all US-grown inputs
• Farms:
  • True Bird 
  • Greener Pastures

Our core offering is a much better version of a grocery store chicken. Slow growth breed, pasture raised, high quality organic feed. It’s still a monoculture system though where chicken is the only product of the farm. Right now these farms raise Cornish Cross chickens, and we collaborated with them to raise Pioneers. We also want to explore a regenerative offering where the birds are raised in a more biodiverse ecosystem and are less reliant on external inputs. 

Regenerative Offering

• Breed: Pioneer 
• Lifestyle:
  • Raised in an ecosystem with grazing cattle or sheep. The ruminants should graze an area first, then chickens come after to eat the insects and grubs. 
  • Housed in stationary coops in a landscape with trees or high crops like sorghum. 
• Diet: 
  • Plentiful forage from insects and vegetation in the pasture system
  • Use meat and farm byproducts as feed. This can come from one farm or the community — animal-grade produce from a neighbor farm, restaurant scraps, wheat mill byproducts, etc. 
  • Grow feed on the farm if needed. These should be ingredients attuned to the Texas climate. Sorghum, wheat, barley for carbohydrates, alfalfa, flax, and pease for protein, potentially black soldier fly larvae too. 
• Farms: 
  • Behind the Oaks
  • Origin Ranch

Our regenerative chicken offering is a work in progress. The Behind the Oaks color yields are raised in a system with ruminants, but still are reliant on feed as the primary calorie source. The Origin Ranch project is just beginning. Our commitment to better chicken is always evolving. We will collaborate with local farmers to grow birds specifically for Radius to maximize animal welfare, nutrient density, and flavor. When you shop at Radius, you support these efforts to build a better local food system. 

Thank you to Matt Wadiak, Mark Schatzker, Kate Kavanaugh, Zach Platt, Cameron Molberg, Ty Burke, and Andy Bromberg for conversations and help on this essay! 

Appendix

Feed land to chicken land calculation 

• 6lb chicken at time of harvest
• Stocking density of 3lbs/sqft 
• 0.5 chicken per sqft
• 20,000 chickens per acre
• 12lbs of feed to raise a 6lb chicken
• 240,000lbs of feed per acre of chicken
• For simplicity, assume corn and soy for feed — 168k lbs acres of corn, 72k lbs of soy
• Corn yield is about 8,400lbs per acre; Soy 3,000lbs per acre
• 168,000 / 8,400 = 20 acres; 72,000 / 3,000 = 24 acres
• 44 acres of corn and soy land for every acre of pasture raised chicken land

Breeds

Here is an analysis of chicken breeds you’ll find at the supermarket and farmer’s market, and the trade-offs of each breed. We believe the Pioneer breed is the sweet spot between an efficient, low cost feed converter and active forager. Chicken genetics are a scientific dance to create breeds tuned for the below qualities. There is no “perfect breed”; there are trade-offs with each.

• Feed conversion ratio: Pounds of feed required for each pound of weight gain. If a chicken has a FCR of 2, it requires 2lb of feed to gain 1lb of weight. The lower the FCR, the less feed required, and the cheaper the meat.
• Grow out period: The amount of time it takes for a chicken to reach market weight (about 6lbs). A very efficient grow out period could be as short as 5 weeks from birth to death. The shorter the grow out period, the less feed and labor required, and the cheaper the meat.
• Flavor, Texture, and Muscle Distribution: Each breed has a different flavor profile (strong or mild), texture (tender or firm), and meat distribution (breast heavy, leg heavy, or evenly distributed). These are heavily dependent on feed and lifestyle too, not just breed. Nature and nurture. 
• Foraging energy: Some chicken breeds are more active than others which makes them better at foraging for seeds and hunting insects. The more energetic the breed, the more calories it will burn, and the more space and pasture rotation it will require. Energetic breeds have higher FCR and longer grow out periods, making their meat more expensive, and also more flavorful, firm, and leg meat heavy due to the increased exercise. Less energetic breeds don’t forage as much, so they put on weight faster due to their feed-concentrated diet and lower exercise levels. That makes their meat less expensive, less flavorful, and more tender.

Bibliography

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• “Transfer of bioactive compounds from pasture to meat in organic free-range chickens” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26769274/. 
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