As the well informed and Radio 4 farming programme listeners (not necessarily the same thing) know, there is no legal definition for free range pork.
I’ve always considered 60%+ of their lives outdoors and the rest in open barns with straw bedding (rather than on slats) to be satisfactory. But even that has sometimes been difficult, and we’ve struggled for several years to find a suitable supplier.
Hopefully, that’s all changing because we’re now getting most of our bacon (larger) pigs from a gentleman called Simon Price who calls himself the Free Range Farmer and appears to be just that. The pigs have been excellent so far.
They’re all gilts (female) which any proper butcher will tell you are infinitely superior to boars. Simon buys his weaners from a massive free range pig farm just the other side of Sidmouth and the astounding thing for me, is that everyone else wants boars because they grow faster. Their loss is our gain.