Free range or........

I get organic free range eggs delivered every week with my veg box. The supermarket does do organic ones (but not the online shopping side) but they are never as fresh - the use-by dates are quite short on the supermarket ones. I do buy non-organic free range ones occasionally if I need extra for cooking but try to keep the organic ones for eating as are - especially boiled eggs for breakfast or lunch.
 
I don't buy either. I have my own flock of chooks. 25 hens and pullets and 2 cockerels.

The difference is considerable.

One thing to watch is the conditions that 'free range' actually means and in a lot of cases it is not what you'd expect. They only have to have access to the outdoors, not grass, they only have to have something like 25cm squared per bird because not every bird is out at once, it is something like 10,000 birds per hectare which is a lot. And they only have to have access to outside for 6hrs a day though it varies on a per country basis.

According to the RSPCA, legal requirements for free-range eggs ensure a minimum amount of space and litter for the hens: no more than nine hens a square metre, 10cm of feeder a bird and one drinker for 10 birds.
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This article by the British Hens Welfare Trust clarifies the terms commonly used in the UK. The USA had much looser definitions which I think are state dependant. Australia has clarified is laws recently but went in favour of the egg industry and not the hens!

Wiki also had a good reference on the difference between countries and their laws.
 
I didn't eat eggs before we moved to the Midlands (England). Now I buy local free-range, organic eggs from side-of-the-road honesty box, or from farm shop/market, or (if I need some urgently) the supermarkets do local eggs too but not as fresh.
 
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