How much do words matter when it comes to what’s on our plates?
Two poultry farmers talk about chicken-raising and how their
understanding of words has changed over time. In six minutes,
“The Lexicon of Sustainability” looks at the evolution of words.
People who raise their chickens outdoors, with access to fresh
air, insects, seeds, and room to roam have “cage-free” chickens.
But does cage-free actually mean that? Cage-free simply means
that the chicken lives outside the cage and nothing more. The
chickens can be packed into a small room that gives them no more
individual space than they would have in a cage. For a few
years, farmers who raised their chickens humanely used cage-free
to denote their model. However, it didn’t take long for factory
farms to take the label and apply it to their thousands of
chickens crammed into a small room. The farmers then have to
find a new word to describe what they’re doing, so that
consumers know what we’re getting. Marketers for the large
corporations inevitably find a w