Firstly, if you are considering a vegan diet for ethical reasons, you must be aware that male chicks are crushed and killed (because they are not egg-layers), on both factory farms and free-range farms. So consuming free-range eggs is not ethical. If you are considering a vegan diet for health reasons, remember that free-range chicken and eggs contain relatively high amounts of fat and cholesterol, so even if you avoid a few toxins by eating free-range chicken, you are still hurting your health by eating it. And lastly, when we think of free-range organic chickens, we think of ‘happy’ birds. But this can be misleading, because there is no real definition of the words ‘free-range’, except that the animals are not in cages. They still may be very closely packed and in very dirty conditions. And they are still forced to produce extremely large numbers of eggs a year, and when they are spent, they go to slaughter just like any other egg-laying hen.