Those under a certain age (let’s say close to 50) have most likely never tried an egg that tastes like egg, the kind from back in the day, whose dense, creamy, orangey-yellow yolk clung to the bread and flooded your mouth with an intense flavour of the countryside.
There came a time when so-called progress meant that food began to be seen as yet another consumer good, something that could be produced on demand in new intensive livestock farms that operated like factories. Here, the ultimate goal was to produce more at a lower cost, no matter how much quality, flavour and even health was lost along the way.
Farms grew in size, animals were locked up in smaller and smaller cages, feed was filled with nutritional complexes that increased the speed of growth of animals and their production (be it meat, milk or eggs) to supply an ever-growing population that seemed to care increasingly less about quality and more and more about price.
Expanding while doing things well
Fortunately, all is not lost, however, as many producers and farmers continue to do things differently. This is the case of CAC, a company founded in the mid-1980s as a cooperative bringing together 13 producers from central and northern Portugal. Today, the public limited company has become the largest egg producer in the country with more than two million laying hens distributed across 25 farms. Their main line of business is alternative egg production, specifically free-range and organic eggs, proving that it is possible to expand while doing things well.
In addition to their farms, situated in the region of Miño and the Serra da Estrela, the mother company of OVOS MATINADOS, Grupo CAC, controls each and every aspect of the production process, from breeding centres, its own feed factories, egg production farms, inspection, grading and packaging centres, production of egg products, and distribution centres guaranteeing logistics throughout the country using its own fleet.
Happy hens lay the best eggs
The Portuguese company is certain that happy hens lay better eggs. It is no surprise then that the free-range farms of Matinados and MATINADOS BIO are located in truly exceptional surroundings where the chickens can enjoy all that nature has to offer.
Benefiting from much more space than on intensive farms, the hens are also allowed to roam the fields freely on a daily basis, enjoying the spectacular, wild nature of the Serra da Estrela, where most of the organic farms are located. Come rain or shine, every day the hens enjoy fresh air and natural feed, which is complimented by a menu developed by nutritionists and produced from top-quality raw ingredients and pasture, favouring the appropriate development of animals and eggs.
Chef Flavio Silva, a first-rate ambassador for Ovos Matinados
Flavio Silva, one of Portugal’s foremost chefs, did not hesitate to become an OVOS MATINADOS ambassador, preaching the virtues of eggs that are the closest thing to those of chickens reared back in the day in village hen houses.
The young chef-entrepreneur and ambassador for the Aldeias do Xisto, does not skimp on his praise of what he considers to be a fully-fledged gourmet product. Silva, a former head chef for the Portuguese national football team, both men’s and women’s, is a staunch defender of Portuguese produce. True to his loyal defence of national products, Silva did not hesitate to associate his image with that of OVOS MATINADOS, as he demonstrated at the last edition of the National Agriculture Fair (FNA), which took place in Satarém in June 2022. At the fair he led a show-cooking session in which OVOS MATINADOS took centre stage in his recipes. It should be noted that Chef Flávio Silva, as ambassador for Ovos Matina-dos, has accompanied the brand with showcookings at various fairs, not just the FNA.
In addition to these activities, Chef Flávio also accompanied the Matinados roadshow, which travelled around Portugal's 12 cooking and Tourism Schools.