Hens are fed by hand and eggs are collected with great care. That was what things were like at the Gamperhof farm in 2001 when the small family business BioPur was the first in South Tyrol to receive a packing centre number for organic eggs – the official number which is printed as an identifier on any egg that is meant for sale. And since that day, on which the Gurndin family started to market organic eggs ... nothing has changed.

To this day, the Gampenhof farm has remained the only laying hen farm in South Tyrol with “traditional”, self-made coops. At an altitude of approx. 1,200 metres in the municipality of Aldein/Aldino, the hens have ample room to run, lush grass, and rich soil to scratch. All that is carried forward into the quality of the eggs.

Thanks to that, the Gampenhof eggs, which bear the South Tyrolean seal of quality, are in high demand. Over the years, the business has taken other organic producers on board for whom the Gampenhof farm takes care of their marketing activities under the BioPur brand. By now, BioPur distributes eggs from almost 4,000 laying hens in all of South Tyrol, and they are all organic.

The objectives have remained the same for pioneer Anton Gurndin from the Gampenhof farm: “We want to produce high-quality foodstuff at a price that anyone can afford.” Together with three other organic producers from South Tyrol, BioPur markets a total of ten million eggs a year, all from free-range and organic farming and bearing the South Tyrolean seal of quality. There is no better proof to show that it is possible, after all, to reconcile quality and animal welfare with a large-scale market.