Then again, the meat industry isn't exactly known for sticking to the rules. A lot of products marketed as freerange are often far from it.
For me, what is perhaps more important is the fact that our meat consumption is one of the largest (some studies claim the single largest) threats to the global environment. Also, our current meat demand is simply impossible to fulfill with free range meat.
Well, i'm thinking buy from a local farm rather than a supermarket. It's when things get widespread that expedience becomes a real issue.
supermarket chicken and beef seems to have two tiers, one dirt cheap and one two or three times as expensive. Are you really getting something more ethical for the extra money?
The expensive stuff the chickens are fed on better food to make them tastier, a freedom food badge also indicates that some kind of standardization was implemented... They tend to come from smaller farms also, so less likely have such bad conditions.