With so many different options available every time you go shopping, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure when confronted with food labels promoting the welfare of the animal. To help you with the confusion, here is a list of some of the most used terms and what it entails:

Organic
The most environmentally friendly food source, buying organic means you are purchasing food produced free of most artificial pesticides, bioengineering, antibiotics and growth hormones. Furthermore, organic livestock have been kept to strict, high welfare standards with almost all of their lives spent in the outdoors.

Free-range
The definition can vary depending on location, but generally, buying free-range means that the animal has lived a happier life with good access to space, drinking troughs and shelter. Although livestock may be brought indoors either at birth or to be fed, free-range means there has been some level of access to pasture for a proportion of life.

Grass-Fed
Applicable to Beef products, the term denotes that the vast majority of the diet consisted of grass. With a lower-stress lifestyle and access to an open-air environment, the meat is often leaner and richer in nutrients.

Outdoor bred
Found on pork products, ‘outdoor bred’ means that pigs are born outside and then are then brought indoors for fattening after a few weeks. They are usually kept in a system with plenty of bedding material such as straw and are free-range.

Outdoor reared
Similar to the above, an ‘outdoor reared’ pig is one that has lived outside for three months before being brought into open-walled sheds before their last three months.