The brand: happy eggs
Can eggs be a branded product? Yes, says Markus Maulavirta, who is convinced that Finnish eggs are pure.
In his mint-green van, Ari Puuri carries the eggs of happy chickens to the shops of southeast Finland. Customers are already asking for ‘Puuri eggs’, because he has turned the eggs into a brand. But what is Puuri’s dream all about? How are the eggs of happy chickens produced?Inside Puuri’s henhouse, the heat and the dim light bring to mind a jungle. The chickens wander about freely on a floor of wood shavings and go to their nests to lay eggs when it suits them. An automatic feeder brings chicken-feed into containers and a familiar keeper comes around three times a day to check that all is well in the henhouse. When the lights go out, the hens fly to their perches to sleep. There are a few roosters there, too, to keep order among the hens.
Ari Puuri inherited chicken-farming from his father, who kept chickens in battery cages. Ari was not sure if he wanted to carry on with his father’s occupation – and he knew for certain he did not want to keep chickens in battery cages.
“I had a dream of being able to give the chickens more freedom. I did a complete overhaul of the henhouses, my own vision of a cage-free system, but it didn’t work. At the time, Finland was just about to join the European Union and I visited Holland and Denmark to see how a cage-free system where the chickens have freedom of movement indoors can be made to work. The secret was automated nests.”
But at this stage, Puuri was still in doubt about whether chicken-farming was his thing. emerged. The original 2,800 chickens in battery cages were turned into one thousand uncaged chickens.
Anti-salmonella action wards off crisis
Finland has its own national anti-salmonella supervision programme, and as a result, has been salmonella-free ever since it joined the European Union. Special permission was needed from the EU to demand certificates proving that imported meat is salmonella-free, in order to maintain this freedom from the disease.Puuri’s chicken farm is tested for salmonella several times a year, which raises production costs. However, as bird flu spreads in Europe, Ari Puuri is grateful that Finland has kept up its strict standards in this respect. “I am able to assure my consumers that it is perfectly safe to eat Finnish eggs, even raw. Our eggs are uncontaminated by either salmonella or bird flu. Because of the risk of salmonella, chickens in Finland were isolated from contact with wild birds even before bird flu came along, so there’s no need to fear that the flu will spread that way to chicken farms here.”
RIITTA MUSTONEN
PHOTO SEPPO SAMULI
