Yes OO I did see that.
It's a ludicrous premise. The article states that free range hens are more stressed as they have the natural stresses of being eaten etc. Well, that's how animals should live isn't it? They should have the natural freedoms and worries of their little chucky lives.
The alternative is horrible. I have never been to a battery farm - I don't think I could but I have seen footage and things like River cottage where Hugh F/W was trying to change eating habits and took a group of die hard cheap chuck eaters to what I suppose was meant to be the middle ground -no cages but still living on a bed of their own poo, pale, half blind, just horrible. The pics I have seen of caged hens just break your heart. The worst one was where a hen in cage with another hen had used that hens dead body as a sort of nest to lay on. Horrendous.
