A very important fact should be noted about "cage-free" practices of poultry husbandry: cage-free does not always equate automatically to good welfare. Cage-free can simply mean that hundreds or even thousands of birds are confined to a large warehouse-like enclosure, where they can suffer poor ventilation (chicken poo produces ammonia, and as birds have far more sensitive lungs than we have, they suffer much more because of it), vent-pecking, beak-treaming (the tip of the lower and upper beaks are removed without anesthesia), blocked access to food and water by more dominant birds, filthy substrate conditions, lack of sunlight (birds see much father along the UV spectrum than we do, so natural lighting can be very important for social interactions and identifying individuals) lack of proper enrichment, and on and on.

Also, birds are not covered under the US Animal Welfare Act thanks in part to agribusiness lobbyists, so there is very little protection for those unfortunate birds living in poor conditions.