Why You Can Trust CNET Best Places to Buy Chicken Online: Organic Options and More
These vendors sell organic, certified-humane and pasture-raised poultry.
Buying chicken online might seem like an odd thing to do, especially if you've got plenty of in-store options around you. But if you're looking to fill your fridge or freezer with budget-friendly wings and other cuts of chicken, you might want to consider online retailers that sell quality poultry at competitive prices. Buying chicken online is also an excellent way to find quality organic chicken, certified humane, pasture-raised birds and other specific types. Even if you're not so picky, there are several retailers to buy butcher-fresh chicken from and take grocery store guesswork out of the equation.
Read more: Here's What Chicken Labels Really Mean
Why might you buy chicken online?
When you're cruising the chicken aisle at your local market or grocery store, you're limited in selection, but a flock of online retailers makes finding the type of chicken you want easier than ever. With a little investigation, you can find the best place to buy chicken online that meets all your requirements. You can get the exact chicken cuts and type of chicken you're searching for, all with just a few clicks, and many of these retailers provide much more information about the chicken and poultry than a simple grocery store label.
Smaller producers like Primal Pastures and Cooks Venture sell high-quality, certified humane chicken raised on non-GMO feed and grown with regenerative farming practices direct to you at competitive prices.
FreshDirect is a regional grocery delivery service with excellent options for buying chicken.
You can also get great deals on chicken when you purchase online, including on whole chickens, and especially when chicken is purchased in bulk or semibulk. You can scour the web or jump on the mailing list for these chicken purveyors (or check back with us, of course) to find out about limited online chicken sales and special package deals. Online butchers such as Rastelli's, ButcherBox, Crowd Cow and grocery delivery services including Amazon Fresh and FreshDirect carries organic and free-range chicken too. You can easily bundle it all up in one order of butcher-box-quality meat and save on shipping costs and trips to the store.
Read more: Is Grocery Shopping Online Cheaper Than at the Store? I Did the Math
Safety and freshness
If you're concerned about freshness, most of these online chicken purveyors ship their birds chilled or frozen via highly traceable logistics and usually in just a couple of days or less. Many have begun using eco-friendly shipping solutions, too, like recycled denim and compostable or reusable boxes. (Some do still ship in Styrofoam.) At present, we have not uncovered any instances of compromised freshness or widespread foodborne illness linked to buying chicken and poultry online. It stands to reason that it is at least as safe or safer than buying from a brick-and-mortar store. As with anything, the higher quality the operation -- both online or in person -- the less chance there is of a "situation."
Types of chicken you can buy online: Organic, humanely raised and more
This is one of the biggest advantages of ordering chicken from an online poultry retailer. As mentioned, in a grocery store you have limited options and often the best stuff sells out first. Online chicken retailers like Thrive Market, Crowd Cow and Fresh Direct allow you to select exactly what you want, and their inventory is less vulnerable to outside supply chain disruption. This includes specific cuts of chicken like breasts, thighs, wings and whole chickens, but also chicken that is bred and raised according to a standard of your choosing. You can buy organic chicken, certified humane chicken and pasture-raised chicken and have them sent to your door in just days and on a regular basis. In addition to chicken, you can find high-quality turkey and quality fresh meat at many of these online retailers, as well as more specialized poultry like duck, pheasant, quail and game hen, if you know where to look.
Smaller producers like Primal Pastures and Cooks Venture sell high-quality, certified humane chicken raised on non-GMO feed and grown with regenerative farming practices direct to you at competitive prices.
Best places to buy chicken online
At this online market, you can buy pieces of or whole organic and pasture-raised chicken. You can also build a custom butcher box of meat and seafood to stock the fridge and freezer.
Despite the name, this newer online meat purveyor carries a lot more than beef. Crowd Cow has one of the best selections of free-range and organic chicken you can order online. Purchase organic and pasture-raised whole chickens, boneless chicken breast and more.
Founder and CEO Matt Wadiak's given goal is to improve the overall farming and feeding system that supports the massive poultry industry and bring it to scale (it's currently distributing upward of 700,000 chickens per week) so more people can eat better chicken raised on environmentally friendly feed.
You can get its GAP Animal Welfare Certified heirloom chickens, which are bred to be biologically sound, gut-healthy and tasty (speaking from experience), directly from Cooks Venture's website.
FreshDirect grocery delivery but it's only available in the Northeast for now. Those in the service area can enjoy a wide range of poultry options including Certified Organic Smart chickens which are fed an organic grain diet, and are certified humane by the Humane Farm Animal Care.
Specialty food store D'Artagnan has a great selection of certified-humane, air-chilled, antibiotic-free and pasture-raised chicken, making it one of the best places to buy chicken online. D'Artagnan carries whole chickens, chicken pieces and specialty items including truffle chicken sausage.
Chicken thighs are incredibly flavorful and a perfect candidate for dishes like chicken cacciatore or lemon pan chicken. Rastelli's will ship out four 12-ounce packs of boneless skinless thighs for $40 or four 40-ounce packs of organic chicken thighs for $29. Save 5% if you make it a recurring delivery and snag any number of Rastelli's other great meats direct from the New Jersey-based specialty shop while you're filling up your cart.
You've probably seen these chicken products and others from this line in your local market. You can rest assured Applegate stresses quality in its products, including organic and certified humane chicken in many of them. That includes Applegate's homestyle chicken tenders or breaded chicken patties, which are both made using humanely raised birds.
All of this online butcher's chicken is GAP animal welfare-certified. While you can't place single orders for breasts or single whole chickens, you can build your own monthly boxes that include chicken or choose ones that are curated by ButcherBox.
Chicken labels to consider
Sifting through the labels and terminology when buying meat and poultry can be tricky. With so many different standards it's helpful to have a way to decode the chicken label. To complicate matters, only some of the labels refer to US Department of Agriculture regulations while others, like "all-natural," are simply marketing buzzwords that mean nothing.
These first two labels signify some of the most rigorous standards and are the best indicators you're getting a humanely raised poultry product.
Certified humane chicken
According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, this label represents a significant improvement over conventional standards and means outdoor access for ruminants and for pigs and poultry when accompanied by the words "free-range" or "pasture-raised." If animals are raised indoors, it means more space, bedding and enrichment are required and subtherapeutic antibiotics are prohibited. Standards extend to transport and slaughter too, and compliance is assured by independent on-farm auditing.
Animal welfare certified chicken
This six-level rating program for animals raised for meat and eggs is slightly more complex. According to the ASPCA, each successive level represents progressively higher welfare and includes all requirements of those below it. Cage confinement, hormones and subtherapeutic antibiotics are prohibited at all levels, standards extend to transport and slaughter and compliance with them is verified by auditors on every farm.
Organic chicken
The "organic" label is a good one to look out for but keep in mind it really just means that the chickens have been fed a certified organic diet and often -- but not always -- means the farming practices used in feeding the birds are better. The chicken label doesn't signal anything about a chicken's quality of life or humane practices during their life or death and, in many cases, organic chickens still experience a lot of factory farming's most notorious practices.
No antibiotics or chicken raised without antibiotics
This means the chickens were not routinely given preventative antibiotics, which many deem harmful, but it doesn't mean they weren't given antibiotics if they got sick.
Pasture-raised chicken
Because there's no legal definition of this term, "pasture-raised" is hard to verify, though it implies birds spent significant time outdoors and in a pasture. The USDA requires chicken labels to be "accurate" but without any formal guidelines, this one has quite a bit of wiggle room.
Free-range chicken
This is another label you've likely seen on sides of egg cartons and chicken packages that is misleading once you dive into the criteria. "Free-range" is meant to indicate that chickens had access to the outdoors but there is almost no requirement for how much or how big that outdoor space is. In many cases, poultry coops are set up so that the chickens don't even use the outdoor space.
All-natural chicken
This is a marketing term and means nothing. There are no requirements for a chicken to be labeled all-natural and if you see it, you should probably assume it is anything but.
For more, check out this chicken labeling chart from the ASPCA.
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