In my experience they’re not as terrible as some of the otheres… definitely not where production farming chickens are concerned.

They require a minimum of 60 acres per operation with the land sectioned off and the flock rotated between parcels. Parcels and production have to meet certain, fairly rigorous, quality control standards or Vital can pull the contract and no longer will purchase eggs. Contracts renew every 5 years, and if it’s not to the QC standards and proper maintenance/upgrades aren’t maintained, the contract will be pulled.

This is all personal experience from looking into contracting with them and raising eggs. I didn’t wind up going through with it due to startup costs and certain logistics… but I did speak with them quite a bit before I waived the whole thing off.

This is the company that puts a code on the side where you can see a video of the farm they’re laid on, right? (E: oops, just saw your post mentioned that lol) I haven’t bought eggs in a while, but every time I’ve bought these the farms have looked pretty legit. Like, as close to raising chickens in the back yard as you could reasonably expect a large scale supplier to be. I grew up near factory farms and it’s light years beyond that absolute hellscape.

It’s likely. There is no enforced definition of “pasture”, “open range” or “cage free”.

For example for meat chickens, “open range” just means 12 feet of open space at least once in their life. The rest of their life could be crammed in a building with thousands of others and it’s still “open range”

https://www.foodandwine.com/are-vital-farms-eggs-ethical-8723788 They got sued for false advertisement and a rundown on food and wine tells the details but tldr: they didnt lose the lawsuit and the settlement with PETA was about conduct by the lawyers not the farmers. That said almost all egg farming cannot be particularly humane since it starts with putting all male chicks into a shredder alive.

But

This brand is at minimum “certified humane”, which carries some actual requirements they must meet, which includes at least X square feet of outdoor space available to each chicken, which is a measurable thing. However, as the article points out, there’s no required amount of time the chickens spend there, so that space could be “available” to them in the same way that the grand canyon is “available” to all people in America. It might not be feasible to get there, and there’s no required minimum indoor space so it could be 100million chickens in a shed with a single doggy door that connects via tunnel to a cattle ranch next door. Technically available but designed to minimize use.

I used to pay the premium for these and… pete gerties(? I think) but learning how little was enforcably being done for how much extra i was paying made me jaded and i slowly phased eggs out of my home diet. Decide for yourself. Certified humane is better than not Certified humane, and almost all the rest of the labels mean nothing and are not checked or enforced by any third party.