Animal production systems that offer outdoor access to the animals have become increasingly popular in the Western world due to the growing general discontent of consumers with conventional bioindustrial farming practices.
These open production systems offer improved animal welfare but may create new problems for animal health, resulting in increased food safety risks from bacterial, viral, or parasitic infections or environmental contaminants
Examples of these new problems include increased Toxoplasma gondii infections in pigs and high dioxin levels in eggs from free-range hens.
In this review, the relation between positive and negative points of free-range and organic livestock production systems is discussed with reference to production in The Netherlands.
We investigated how proponents of more animal welfare friendly systems deal with potential negative issues in public and whether any risk communication is used. Generally, we found that the existence of a dilemma is disputed or avoided in communication with the consumer.