📅 Prepared May 4, 2026
✍️ Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI
⌛ 11 min read
SOURCING & LAND-USE RESEARCH SERIES | RESEARCH BRIEF
What "Pasture-Raised" Means:
A Working Definition, the Academic Literature, and a Verification Standard for FAT Sourcing
"Pasture-raised" is one of the most powerful — and least standardized — claims on a U.S. meat or poultry label. Federal law does not define the term. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service treats it as a voluntary marketing claim, alongside "Free Range," "Free Roaming," "Pasture Fed," "Pasture Grown," and "Meadow Raised," and strongly encourages third-party certification to substantiate it. The closest thing to a federal pasture standard sits inside the National Organic Program, where ruminant livestock must derive at least 30 percent of dry matter intake from pasture during a grazing season of at least 120 days. The peer-reviewed literature is clearer than the labeling system: well-managed pasture access is consistently associated with the expression of natural behaviors and improved welfare across cattle, pigs, and poultry, with documented tradeoffs in parasites, predation, and biosecurity that strong management can address.1,2,3,4,5
Prepared for publication by Farm Animal Transparency | May 4, 2026
| "Pasture-raised on a label is a marketing claim, not a regulatory standard. The same words can describe a hen with 108 square feet of vegetated pasture and year-round outdoor access, or a hen with a small dirt yard accessed once a week. The right test is not the words on the package; it is the certifier behind them and the documentation behind the certifier." |
At a glance
| • "Pasture-raised" has no federal regulatory definition for U.S. meat or poultry. USDA FSIS treats it as a voluntary animal-raising claim that establishments must substantiate, and the agency strongly encourages third-party certification.1,2 |
| • The only federal rule that approaches a pasture standard is the National Organic Program's pasture practice standard at 7 CFR 205.240, which requires that ruminant livestock obtain at least 30 percent of their dry matter intake from pasture during a grazing season of not less than 120 days. The rule does not apply to pigs or poultry and is suspended during ruminant finishing.3,4 |
| • Third-party certifiers fill the definitional gap. Certified Humane "Pasture Raised" requires 108 square feet of vegetated outdoor space per laying hen (1,000 hens per 2.5 acres), year-round outdoor access, and rotation of fields. Certified Animal Welfare Approved by AGW requires animals to be raised outdoors on pasture or range for their entire lives. Global Animal Partnership reaches "pasture-centered" production at Step 4 and continuous pasture at Steps 5 and 5+. American Grassfed Association requires lifetime pasture access for cattle, sheep, goats, and bison.5,6,7,8 |
| • The peer-reviewed welfare literature consistently links well-managed pasture access to natural behaviors — foraging, dust-bathing, exploratory rooting, social grouping — that are difficult or impossible to express in confined indoor systems. Mellor's 2020 Five Domains Model uses these natural behaviors as evidence in Domain 4 (Behavioural Interactions) and Domain 5 (Mental State).9 |
| • Pasture is not free of welfare risk. Holt (2022) and others document that outdoor systems can increase exposure to predators, weather extremes, internal parasites, and avian influenza if not well managed. The literature treats these as management problems, not arguments against pasture itself.10,11,12 |
| • Animal Welfare Institute's 2024 analysis found that 85 percent of animal-welfare claims on U.S. meat and poultry products lacked adequate substantiation under FSIS review, and that the agency does not require companies to submit specific documentation demonstrating compliance with revised pasture-raised guidance.13 |
Executive Summary
"Pasture-raised" is a label claim doing more work in U.S. meat marketing than U.S. law asks of it. There is no federal regulation that defines the term for cattle, pigs, or poultry. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service treats "Pasture-Raised," along with "Free Range," "Free Roaming," "Pasture Fed," "Pasture Grown," and "Meadow Raised," as voluntary animal-raising claims that establishments must substantiate to the agency, and the agency's August 2024 guideline strongly encourages third-party certification.1,2
The closest the federal government gets to a pasture standard is the National Organic Program's pasture practice standard at 7 CFR 205.240, which applies only to ruminants and requires that organic ruminants obtain at least 30 percent of their dry matter intake from pasture grazed during a grazing season of not less than 120 days.3,4 The rule does not apply to organic pigs or poultry, and the 30 percent requirement is suspended during the ruminant finishing period. Outside organic, there is no federal pasture floor at all.
Into that gap have stepped third-party certifiers. Their definitions of "pasture-raised" vary by an order of magnitude in numerical specifics — square footage per bird, time outdoors, rotation requirements, lifetime versus seasonal access — and most strong programs require documentation, on-site audit, and traceability that FSIS does not.5,6,7,8
For an organization concerned with transparency in animal protein sourcing, the practical implication is the same one FAT applies to "regenerative": the words on a package cannot be accepted at face value. They must be read as evidence claims, supported by certifier records, audit reports, stocking density figures, and on-pasture time. This brief sets out the working definition FAT uses, the academic and government sources that support it, the way pasture-raised relates to grass-fed and free-range, and the verification standard FAT proposes for evaluating pasture-raised supplier claims.
A practical working definition for FAT
For FAT, a practical working definition is:
| "Pasture-raised" describes animals that spend a substantial and verifiable portion of their lives on managed, vegetated outdoor land — pasture or range — at stocking densities that allow the expression of natural behaviors, with documented access time, third-party verification, and traceability through to the consumer-facing label. |
This definition reflects three things at once. First, it acknowledges that no single number defines pasture across species: a laying hen, a finishing steer, and a sow have different biological needs and different stocking densities at which pasture functions as pasture rather than as a worn dirt lot. Second, it treats "substantial" as a verifiable claim, not a vibe — quantified in days, hours, percentage of dry matter intake, or square footage by an outside auditor. Third, it requires that the verification reach the buyer: a strong on-farm practice that is invisible by the time the meat is on a shelf cannot support a label.
What U.S. law actually says
FSIS treats "pasture-raised" as a voluntary marketing claim. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service is the federal agency responsible for approving labels on meat and poultry. In its August 2024 update to the FSIS Guideline on Substantiating Animal-Raising or Environment-Related Labeling Claims, FSIS confirmed that establishments do not need to include additional explanation on the label for living-or-raising-conditions claims such as "Free Range," "Free Roaming," "Pasture Fed," "Pasture Grown," "Pasture Raised," or "Meadow Raised," but must provide specific documentation to substantiate the claim. The agency strongly encourages — but does not require — third-party certification.1,2
The National Organic Program is the only federal pasture rule. The NOP's pasture practice standard at 7 CFR 205.240 requires that ruminant livestock graze pasture during the grazing season — not less than 120 days per calendar year — and that ruminants obtain not less than an average of 30 percent of their dry matter intake from grazed pasture over the course of the grazing season. The rule applies only to ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, bison) and not to pigs or poultry, and the 30 percent requirement is suspended during the finishing period.3,4
The FTC Green Guides do not regulate "pasture-raised" specifically. The Federal Trade Commission's Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims address general environmental claims (recyclable, biodegradable, carbon offsets, certifications and seals) but do not directly govern animal-raising claims such as "pasture-raised." The Green Guides do, however, establish the general principle that environmental claims must be supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence and should not mislead consumers — a principle that applies to seals and certifications used on meat packaging.14
The result is an asymmetry between law and use. A producer can put "pasture-raised" on a meat label after substantiating it through a private process that FSIS reviews on paper. The agency does not pre-inspect the farm. As Animal Welfare Institute documented in 2024, FSIS does not require companies to submit specific documentation demonstrating compliance with the revised "pasture-raised" guidance and instead only strongly encourages producers to do so. AWI's review of label submissions found that 85 percent of animal-welfare claims on U.S. meat and poultry products lacked adequate substantiation.13
What the academic literature says
The peer-reviewed welfare literature has converged on a clearer picture than the labeling system. Across species, well-managed pasture access supports the expression of species-typical behaviors, and the absence of pasture access is consistently associated with welfare costs that confined systems must engineer around.
Mellor's 2020 update to the Five Domains Model — the most widely used scientific framework for animal welfare assessment — treats the ability to express natural behaviors as a central indicator of welfare in Domain 4 (Behavioural Interactions) and a contributor to positive mental states in Domain 5 (Mental State).9 Pasture access is one of the most direct ways to provide for those behaviors in production animals.
For poultry, Castellini and colleagues at the University of Perugia have documented in a 20-year program of research that extensive rearing systems allow birds to express dust-bathing, scratching, foraging, perching, running, and flying, and that pasture intake can reduce feed consumption by up to 30 percent in slow-growing genotypes. The same body of work emphasizes that bird genotype, ranging behavior, and pasture quality are the variables that determine whether outdoor access functions biologically as pasture.15 Holt's 2022 Centennial Review in Poultry Science presents the counter-evidence: in poorly managed European systems, hens with outdoor access showed higher mortality, more predation, and elevated infectious disease load. Holt's argument is not that outdoor access is inherently harmful; it is that biosecurity, predator control, and pasture rotation are determinative.10
For pigs, Pietrosemoli and Tang's 2020 review in Agriculture identified the welfare benefits of pasture systems — exploratory rooting, foraging, social grouping, thermoregulation in mud and shade — alongside the welfare risks specific to outdoor pig production: temperature extremes, predator exposure, parasites, piglet pre-weaning mortality, and the difficulty of monitoring sick animals across paddocks. The authors framed the risks as design and management problems, not arguments against pasture itself.11
For ruminants, Spigarelli et al. (2020) reviewed animal-based welfare measures usable on pasture and confirmed that lameness, body condition, hair coat, and behavioral expression are observable and audit-able outdoors. Klopatek et al. (2022) in Journal of Animal Science compared four California beef-finishing systems and found tradeoffs across performance, economics, water use, energy use, and greenhouse gas intensity, with no system showing absolute superiority — a reminder that "pasture-finished" is a welfare and ecological claim with environmental complexity, not a universal optimum.12,16
| Source | Framing | Key finding for FAT |
|---|---|---|
| Mellor et al. (2020), Animals | Five Domains Model update including human-animal interactions | Behavioural expression and mental state are core welfare indicators; pasture access is a primary route to provide for them.9 |
| Castellini et al. (2021), Animals (Perugia 20-year program) | Review of extensive poultry rearing | Slow-growing genotypes use pasture, reduce feed intake up to 30%, and express dust-bathing, foraging, perching when outdoor access is well managed.15 |
| Holt (2022), Poultry Science, Centennial Review | EU evidence on mandatory outdoor access for organic layers | Outdoor systems can carry higher mortality and disease load if biosecurity, predator control, and rotation are weak. Outcome depends on management.10 |
| Pietrosemoli & Tang (2020), Agriculture | Review of pasture pig systems | Pasture supports exploratory rooting and foraging; risks (parasites, predators, temperature, piglet mortality) are management problems with known mitigations.11 |
| Spigarelli et al. (2020), Animals | Animal-based welfare measures on pasture for ruminants | Welfare can be assessed credibly on pasture using lameness, condition, coat, and behavioural measures.12 |
| Klopatek et al. (2022), Journal of Animal Science | Comparison of four CA beef finishing systems | Grass-fed and grain-fed beef differ on performance, water, energy, and GHG; no system is universally superior.16 |
How "pasture-raised" applies to meat sourcing
Pasture-raised is not the same claim across species. For FAT's sourcing review, the most useful framing is to ask, for each species, what well-managed pasture access actually looks like and what evidence should accompany the claim.
| Species | What pasture-raised should mean | What FAT should look for |
|---|---|---|
| Beef, bison, lamb, sheep, goats | Lifetime pasture or rangeland access with pasture- or range-finishing under managed grazing | Documented stocking rates and rotation; pasture- or range-finished (not "grass-fed" with feedlot finish); third-party certification covering finishing, not just early life. |
| Pigs | Outdoor paddock or pasture access with rooting, wallowing, and shade — not indoor confinement with a small concrete yard | Stocking density per acre; rotation between paddocks; shelter and shade; certifier with on-farm audit; clear feed sourcing (pigs are omnivores, not forage-finished). |
| Poultry (chicken, turkey) | Year-round outdoor access on managed vegetated land at stocking densities that maintain ground cover — not a pop-door to a worn dirt run | Square footage per bird; vegetative cover; rotation; predator protection; certifier with on-farm audit; feed sourcing for grain portion of diet. |
The key practical contrast is between pasture-raised as a description of land management and pasture-raised as a description of access. A bird may have technical "outdoor access" through a pop-door to a small dirt yard and the producer may use the language legally; that arrangement does not meet the welfare or land-use intent of the term as Castellini, Holt, Pietrosemoli, and AGW all use it.
Pasture-raised, free-range, grass-fed, and organic are not the same
Four labeling claims commonly travel together on meat and poultry. They are not interchangeable.
Free-range is a USDA poultry-only claim that, in current FSIS guidance, simply requires that birds have access to the outdoors. The required outdoor area, time outside, and quality of the space are not federally specified. Many "free-range" systems satisfy the standard with a small dirt yard accessed for a portion of the day.1
Grass-fed describes diet, not space. USDA FSIS treats grass-fed as a voluntary claim that the animal's diet has been forage-based, but the agency rescinded its 2007 grass-fed standard in 2016, leaving private programs to fill the gap. American Grassfed Association requires lifetime pasture access and 100 percent forage diet; many other "grass-fed" claims permit grain-finishing in feedlots.8
Pasture-raised describes outdoor land use and access — where the animal lives, not what it eats. A pasture-raised steer may also be grass-finished (the strong case) or may be moved to a feedlot for finishing (a weaker but legally permissible case in the absence of a stronger certifier).
Organic is a regulated USDA labeling term governing inputs (no synthetic pesticides, no GMOs) and, for ruminants only, pasture access through 7 CFR 205.240. Organic does not by itself specify pasture access for pigs or poultry beyond the outdoor-access requirement of the broader livestock standard.3,4
The strongest claims combine these — a 100% grass-fed, pasture-raised, organic, and welfare-certified product from one operation — and the strongest verification programs require multiple of them in combination.
The certifier landscape
Because federal law leaves "pasture-raised" undefined, third-party certifiers determine what the claim means in practice. Their numerical specifications differ substantially.
| Program | What it requires for "pasture-raised" | Verification |
|---|---|---|
| Certified Humane (HFAC) — Pasture Raised | Laying hens: 108 sq ft of vegetated outdoor space per bird (1,000 birds per 2.5 acres); year-round outdoor access; minimum 6 hours per day on pasture (weather permitting); pasture rotation required.5 | Annual on-site inspection by Humane Farm Animal Care; standards developed by HFAC's scientific committee. |
| Certified Animal Welfare Approved by AGW | All species: animals raised outdoors on pasture or range for their entire lives; outcome-based welfare standards; species-specific stocking and shelter rules.6 | Annual on-farm audit by AGW-trained auditors. Whole-farm certification. |
| Global Animal Partnership (G.A.P.) 5-Step | Tiered. Step 4: pasture-centered, with daily outdoor access and pasture for poultry, pigs, and cattle. Steps 5 and 5+: continuous pasture, removed only in extreme weather.7 | Third-party audit by G.A.P.-approved certifiers. |
| American Grassfed Association (AGA) | Cattle, sheep, goats, bison: lifetime pasture access; 100% forage diet; no confinement; no antibiotics or hormones.8 | Independent audit. Diet- and access-focused, not biodiversity- or soil-outcome focused. |
| USDA Organic (NOP) — for ruminants | Ruminants: ≥ 30% dry matter intake from pasture during a grazing season of ≥ 120 days. Pigs and poultry: outdoor access required generally, but no pasture-percentage rule.3,4 | USDA-accredited certifying agents; annual review and on-site inspection. |
| Self-declared "pasture-raised" without certification | No defined standard. Whatever the brand says it means. | None. The brand is the only source of the claim. AWI documented inadequate substantiation in the majority of FSIS-reviewed welfare claims.13 |
Why verification matters
Because "pasture-raised" is an outdoor-living claim that consumers cannot independently verify by looking at packaging, the entire claim rests on documentation that lives upstream of the shelf. FSIS's August 2024 guideline on animal-raising claims acknowledges this directly by strongly encouraging third-party certification — but does not require it. The result is the gap that AWI's 2024 analysis quantified: most welfare claims reach FSIS as paper assertions that the agency does not field-verify.1,2,13
For FAT, this means pasture-raised should be treated as a verification process, not a label. Suppliers should be able to provide:
- The certification body and standard their pasture-raised claim is verified against;
- The most recent on-farm audit date and audit summary;
- Stocking density per acre or square footage per animal;
- Documented time on pasture (hours per day, days per year, percentage of life);
- Pasture rotation plans and recovery periods;
- Predator-protection measures and shelter design;
- Lot-level traceability from the operation to the consumer-facing label.
A caution: outdoor access carries real welfare risks if poorly managed
FAT should not present pasture-raised as costless. Holt's 2022 Centennial Review of European data on mandatory outdoor access for organic laying hens documents that hens with outdoor access can experience higher mortality from predation and infectious disease, increased exposure to avian influenza, and higher levels of soil-borne dioxins and PCBs that can transfer to eggs.10 Pietrosemoli and Tang (2020) document parallel risks for outdoor pigs — temperature extremes, parasite load, predator exposure, and difficulty in monitoring individual animals.11
The science treats these as a management agenda, not a verdict against pasture. Predator fencing, pasture rotation, biosecurity protocols at pop-doors, breed selection appropriate to climate, parasite-management plans, and competent stockmanship are the variables that determine whether outdoor access functions as welfare gain or welfare risk. A credible pasture-raised certifier should have rules covering each of these. The presence of those rules — and the audit record showing they are met — is what separates a strong pasture-raised claim from a weak one.
FAT's recommended sourcing standard
FAT should define a pasture-raised supplier as one that can show five things:
| # | Pillar | What evidence looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Verifiable outdoor access | Documented hours per day, days per year, or percentage of life on managed vegetated outdoor land. Numbers, not adjectives. |
| 2 | Stocking density appropriate to the species | Square footage per bird, head per acre, sows per paddock — at densities that allow the land to function as pasture, not a worn lot. |
| 3 | Land management | Pasture rotation, ground-cover maintenance, water and shade access, predator protection. |
| 4 | Animal-welfare standards | Third-party certification covering health, behavior, and stockmanship — not just outdoor space. |
| 5 | Traceability and audit | On-farm audit by an independent body; documentation that travels with the lot from farm to label. |
The FAT perspective
"Pasture-raised" sits in the same legal architecture as "regenerative" and "humane": a phrase that carries enormous consumer trust, with no federal definition behind it. The peer-reviewed welfare literature gives the term real meaning — birds dust-bathe and forage, pigs root and wallow, ruminants graze and ruminate, and these behaviors are observable, audit-able, and welfare-significant. The labeling system does not. FSIS reviews paper claims; AWI documents that most of those claims arrive without adequate substantiation; private certifiers, where they exist, vary by an order of magnitude in what they require.
FAT's posture should be the same one it takes toward regenerative agriculture: do not source on the word, source on the verification. The strongest pasture-raised meat will come from operations that combine genuine outdoor land use, species-appropriate stocking densities, animal-welfare standards verified by an independent auditor, and a paper trail that survives all the way to the consumer. The weakest will be self-declared. Most of the products on a shelf today sit somewhere between, and the work of a transparency organization is to make that gap visible.
| FAT's rule of thumb: "Pasture-raised" is not a regulated claim. Treat it as a question, not an answer. Ask which certifier verifies it, ask what the certifier requires, and ask for the audit record. If those answers are not available, the claim is not. |
Endnotes
1. USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, "FSIS Guideline on Substantiating Animal-Raising or Environment-Related Labeling Claims," FSIS-GD-2024-0006, August 2024. fsis.usda.gov; full PDF at fsis.usda.gov/.../FSIS-GD-2024-0006.pdf.
2. USDA, "USDA Releases Updated Guideline to Strengthen Substantiation of Animal-Raising and Environment-Related Claims on Meat and Poultry Labels," August 28, 2024. usda.gov.
3. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, "7 CFR 205.240 — Pasture practice standard," accessed May 2026. ecfr.gov.
4. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, National Organic Program, "Pasture for Organic Ruminant Livestock: Understanding and Implementing the National Organic Program (NOP) Pasture Rule." ams.usda.gov.
5. Humane Farm Animal Care, "Animal Care Standards: Egg-Laying Hens," 2023. certifiedhumane.org; consumer summary at certifiedhumane.org/decode-egg-labels/.
6. A Greener World, "Certified Animal Welfare Approved by AGW: Standards," accessed May 2026. agreenerworld.org.
7. Global Animal Partnership, "The 5-Step Animal Welfare Program," accessed May 2026. globalanimalpartnership.org; species-specific standards at globalanimalpartnership.org/standards.
8. American Grassfed Association, accessed May 2026. americangrassfed.org; A Greener World "Certified Grassfed by AGW" at agreenerworld.org.
9. David J. Mellor, Ngaio J. Beausoleil, Katherine E. Littlewood, and Andrew N. McLean et al., "The 2020 Five Domains Model: Including Human-Animal Interactions in Assessments of Animal Welfare," Animals 10, no. 10 (2020): 1870. PMC / NIH.
10. Peter S. Holt, "Centennial Review: A revisiting of hen welfare and egg safety consequences of mandatory outdoor access for organic egg production," Poultry Science, 2022. PMC / NIH.
11. Silvana Pietrosemoli and Clara Tang, "Animal Welfare and Production Challenges Associated with Pasture Pig Systems: A Review," Agriculture 10, no. 6 (2020): 223. mdpi.com.
12. Chiara Spigarelli, Anna Zuliani, Monica Battini, and Silvana Mattiello, "Welfare Assessment on Pasture: A Review on Animal-Based Measures for Ruminants," Animals 10, no. 4 (2020): 609. mdpi.com.
13. Animal Welfare Institute, "Buyer Beware: USDA's New Meat Label Guidelines Are a Raw Deal," AWI Quarterly, Winter 2024. awionline.org; "A Consumer's Guide to Food Labels and Animal Welfare," awionline.org/.../awi-food-label-guide.pdf.
14. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, "Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims" (Green Guides), 16 CFR Part 260. ftc.gov.
15. Cesare Castellini, Alessandro Dal Bosco, Simona Mattioli et al., "Extensive Rearing Systems in Poultry Production: The Right Chicken for the Right Farming System. A Review of Twenty Years of Scientific Research at Perugia University, Italy," Animals 11, no. 5 (2021): 1281. mdpi.com.
16. Sarah C. Klopatek, Erin Marvinney, Tagan Duarte et al., "Grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef systems: performance, economic, and environmental trade-offs," Journal of Animal Science 100, no. 2 (2022): skab374. academic.oup.com; full text at PMC / NIH.
17. World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH/OIE), "Terrestrial Animal Health Code, Chapter 7.10: Animal Welfare and Broiler Chicken Production Systems," 2024. woah.org.
18. Council Regulation (EC) No 1804/1999 of 19 July 1999 supplementing Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91 on organic production of agricultural products, including livestock. eur-lex.europa.eu.
19. Council Directive 2007/43/EC of 28 June 2007 laying down minimum rules for the protection of chickens kept for meat production. eur-lex.europa.eu.
20. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, "NOP 5017: Dry Matter Intake Information for Access to Pasture," accessed May 2026. ams.usda.gov.
