1 - They might not actually be free-range after all. I've seen multiple exposes where the chickens advertised as "free-range" actually weren't, or they were allowed out of their cages for an hour a day and they called that "free-range".
2 - Even if they're are free-range, their conditions could still be appalling. Overcrowding and debeaking are common.
I'm in the UK, and we have proper regulation that sets out what "free range" is - it is not whatever ludicrously tenuous definition the US has dreamt up.
I live in rural Scotland, and can see free range chickens for myself - they seem to be living a good life.
The UK has some of the strictest animal welfare in the world, but they are still continuously broken by most farms across the country it seems. One example of many would be the private investigation into the suppliers for M&S's free range organic eggs in 2016. One of the most well reputed retailers in the country, yet they found barns full of ill chickens unable to walk, rotten corpses littering the place, and overcrowding throughout: https://investigations.peta.org/marks-spencer-cruelty-chicke...
All throughout my teens I worked on cattle and poultry farms across the South of England and to be frank, I saw disturbing scenes at every single one of them. Even though I've somewhat reconciled with eating animal products morally in recent years, I've lost any and all trust in the food production system to do it ethically, despite appearances on the surface.
If rigorous legislation doesn't stop farmers from abusing their livestock, then the only option left it seems is a return to self-reliant homesteading where you know exactly where the food comes from, or the production of synthetic alternatives as discussed in OP's article. Personally, as much as I enjoy the eggs from my rescue hens, I hope for the latter.
They probably have to if you want to keep the same, low and subsided price that people, who don't want or can pay more, got used to.
I'm aware that making a software-engineer salary I can easily afford more humanely raised eggs, but I'd never judge my friends who are, say, schoolteachers, for not being able to justify eggs that are 6x more expensive.
inb4 the inevitable comment of "pasture raised doesn't mean anything, the chickens can still...." Yes I researched the specific farm my eggs come from to make sure it's humane.
Humans are omnivores, we need to eat meat and animal proteins to live well, that's is, we can and we should treats animals we eat differently but that's not just a mere business issue, it's also a dimensional issue: we are many, too many. I doubt we can live without certain practice.
I do not say, of course, that TINA, we are in the sole possible world etc, just saying that going from an extreme to another is a good way to makes disasters.
Factory farm: living every day (and probably not very many of them) like you're in Saw or Cube or something. Far worse than even the pretty bad situation that is life in nature. Like, a lot worse. And that was already pretty bad.
Ethical farms, keeping backyard chickens, et c: Like living in a relatively good dystopia. Brave New World, maybe, in the best case. Logan's Run, in the worst.
It's because living in an network of intensive farms, named cities, detached from our natural environment, seeing the foods popping up regularly in certain place, already prepared, no need to hunt/source it, we thing that food arrive here by nature, that our intensive farm is actually nature?
Is that really different? Oh, yes we are not slaughtered at a certain point of our life, except in case of wars etc, but we are equally "used" for doing various jobs by some of us who think they are puppet-masters and we are the puppets (cfr. famous JP Morgan leaked phrase, various neoliberal books etc). Oh, yes, in our case the shepherd is not from another species (witch made things even worse), but we equally born in such intensive farms not free in nature.
It's just a matter about how much bad farming is bad, how much ethical farming is ethical.
Who’s asking to change other animals? It’s about humans changing their behavior. In nature, forced sex is very common among many animals. But in human societies we have deemed it a criminal activity. That’s just one example to show that humans, especially in our times, have improved ethics and the agency to commit to better ethics compared to our ancestors in the distant past.
https://youaretheirvoice.com/pages/the-clear-consensus
So you’re simply not correct that we need animals to thrive.
Oh, BTW just a bit more time ago most MDs agreed that radioactivity is good for health and they try to determine the best dosage of radium to be put on skin and eat for various purposes like fight baldness or fortifying the fetus in pregnant women. Years later most MDs agree that smoking tobacco is very good for many things, especially useful to fight flu and cold. Few years later we discover that that's was an Eduard Bernays advertising campaign: he created a medical journal that start publishing real studies and he distribute it between medical offices and universities, then he start injecting few false but false but credible studies that praised tobacco smoke. In little time many real researchers have follow claiming other discovering.
I can't really know for sure why there is a push against meat, what I know for sure is that's not a matter of fighting climate change, nor adapting to it. Another thing I know for sure is that ultra-processed foods, like foods based on insects and grains, cost very little for their producers on scale, and can be sold with a very big margin and are complex enough to make them taste good that no small player can compete. Meanwhile I know how sales of statins climbs in the recent years and who profit for them.
[1] witch is a common world and a completely true and false statement since LDL is digested thanks to all animal proteins and pushed up by starchy foods.
In an a bit far past (not that far) doctors recommend smoking as a cure-all for common winter disease, "it kills all the germs of the season", years after we discover that was just the result of an Eduard Bernays campaign for the American Tobacco Company: he create a new scientific journal, collecting real studies and sending it for free "to advertise the new journal", it became popular thanks to easy access and low entry barrier for publishing, then he inject some credible studies that prize smoking. MANY OTHERS researchers have followed them, taking them as true, and amplifying the echo.
Long story short, I have enough basic scientific knowledge to discern and to remember that Science is not based on blind trusting some "expert" but always demand why. Take meat for instance, common voices, dressed as scientific truth say that's bad for climate change because demand much water and produce much methane. Now try to see how much methane we estimate released into the atmosphere due to arctic heating and how much CO₂ is annually release by world fires. Clearly methane from cows does not change the climate. Now water: yes, livestock drink, clean water, and release urine, witch is not clean water. BUT it's still water. If treated to produce natural (ammonia-based) fertilizers we desperately need, the outcome is clean water, because we do not "consume" it, it's just a cycle. So again that statement is true if we just see a small part of the picture, false otherwise.
That's is, I have collect many examples of false beliefs considered established Science that aren't science at all. Of course I do know the ancient pro-smoking campaign was an advertisement campaign because that's history, we have documents, what's up today is "present" documents are not public, at least not much and not yet, but while we can't know "the real truth" we can still try to discern what's probably true from what's probably false, choosing not to trust any guru or formal association, privately founded just to note, but using actual Scientific method, demanding evidence, elaborating it.
If you want a chicken that can actually walk around and go outside you want a pasture raised egg.
I live in rural Scotland, and can see free range chickens for myself - they seem to be living a good life.
I use to think of it in numbers of a4 sheets of paper per hen. In a battery cage they have almost one. In fee range systems they have almost 3.
Not nearly enough for them to avoid stress behaviour and them killing eachother.
I haven't bought a non-free range egg in at least a decade, and I make sure any poultry I buy has been reared with good welfare.