Organic enough was an idea floated by others in the thread. I take no credit. I jumped on it because it matches how I think about these things.I deleted my last post. It was too harsh and confronting. RoyalChick had a good idea "organic enough" but I like the label "responsibly grown" It means I'm weighing every decision based on how it will affect people, insects, and my environment. If you think your outrageously priced 'organic' foods/feeds are perfect, pay the money but remember the Fukushima radiation that made its way into Tuna caught of the west coast. That tuna was processed with all of the rest and some made its way into animal feed...organic animal feed. It was also found in rainwater in Pennsylvania (my state) at 30 times higher than acceptable standards but the government said that it was "still below dangerous levels". Where did that rain go? It fell on the organic (and inorganic) farms and fed the crops. (and if your chickens are like mine, the chickens who manage to choose drinking out of a puddle over their water dish).
Responsibly grown works well for me too.
Of course that means you have to interrogate the grower on what they thought was responsible or organic enough.
That is too complicated for most every day purchases and so standards are set so we can know what a label means. Certified Organic is the one we have and it has many flaws as discussed.
Somehow though there seems to be room in the market for a less challenging but still known standard. It will take more than my allotted years for such a thing to be negotiated, so meanwhile I will muddle along.
To go back to the original purpose of this thread, I feed the Kalmbach 20% Flock Maker feed. I have not seen the BarAle feed anywhere but it looks like a good feed so I will keep an eye open for it.