Why organic and free range?

Although nobody has yet asked me this, I anticipate at some point somebody will wonder why I specify 'organic' or 'free range' with some ingredients. To this there is a long answer and a short answer.

The short answer is that organic meat and dairy products will likely be better for your health than non-organic ones. Free range eggs similarly, plus there is an animal rights factor.

The long answer refers to the types of things that are standard in animal feed on non-organic farms. This includes feed based on ground animal matter, which is a good way of transferring nasty diseases between different animal species, different farms, and between animals and humans (as demonstrated by BSE). It also includes large quantities of additives that aim to increase profitability by doing things like boosting the animal's growth, increasing its milk production, or stopping it from getting too sick to be used in food production.
The form of feed additive that worries me most is antibiotics, which are standardly used daily in animal feed to prevent the animals from becoming sick. Since most animals are kept in poor, cramped conditions that allow infections and diseases to develop and spread very easily, feeding them antibiotics is seen as a good way to retain poor conditions while keeping animals healthy enough to be part of the food chain. The problem is that feeding massive amounts of antibiotics to animals leads to widespread antibiotic resistance, i.e. antibiotics stop working against a lot of bacteria. Antibiotic resistance is a major problem for medicine, since antibiotics are certainly one of the greatest medical advances of the past few hundred years - without them, people can easily die of minor infections and dental problems. Moreover, antibiotic resistant bacteria can move up the food chain because they will often be in the meat or dairy products that you consume. Since antibiotic resistance is already a problem with animals, over time they are fed more and more powerful antibiotics to prevent them getting too sick- a good example (which lead to an FDA investigation) was the fact that the broad spectrum antibiotic Cipro used to be the most popular feed additive antibiotic in the US (under a different name). I know this because I did contract work for their manufacturer to analyse public opinion about it (don't even get me started on talking about diseases and pollutants in farmed salmon!)
So, in summary, bad living conditions for animals go along with feeding them nasty things that will quite likely be bad for your health. Removing those things from animal feed means you are less likely to get sick, antibiotics are less likely to stop working and the animals get to live in better conditions; which is good news all round.