The Best Meat
Belcampo takes an old-fashioned approach to meat. We raise it on our own land. We process it in our own facility. We cut it by hand in our own butcher shops. We create simple, perfectly cooked dishes in our restaurants. By being directly involved in and taking care of every aspect of getting our meat to you, we’re making sure that every bite of Belcampo meat will be the best you’ve ever had.
Our Practices
Everything we do at Belcampo is in service of one goal: to bring you the best meat. The goodness you taste in our meat is a direct result of our care and commitment to the health of our animals and our environment. Click here for our an FAQ on Belcampo and how we treat our animals.
Belcampo produces the best meat possible by going back to basics. We take care of our soil and pasture. We raise healthy, happy animals. We process the meat ourselves and serve it directly to our customers. We believe that it’s possible to produce better tasting, higher quality meat in a way that’s sustainable and healthy for our customers and the land we share.
At Belcampo, soil is one of our most important resources, second only to water. That’s why we do everything we can to build deeper, healthier and more sustainable soils. We pasture multiple species and grow diverse plants, mimicking the natural environment, which helps us create a system that will regenerate on its own to provide a healthy place for our animals to roam.
The quality of meat and its flavor is tied directly to what they eat. By growing a diverse range of grasses, grains and legumes we ensure that our animals have the vitamins and minerals they need. We rotate our animals on a daily basis, and the diversity of species we graze on pasture helps to create a full-circle ecosystem that provides the very best food for all of our animals.
We’ve gone back to the traditional ways of farming for good reason: When an animal has good food, clean water, free range, and fresh air, it thrives. And like our ancestors, we raise a diverse range of animals to keep our pasture and soil robust and healthy. We truly care for our animals and work tirelessly to provide the very best life possible we can for them.
We own and operate our own processing facility, which is located just minutes from our farm headquarters. It features pens based on designs by Temple Grandin, the nation’s premier humane handling expert, to ensure we always handle the animals humanely. We use old-fashioned butchery methods to prepare our meat—by hand, not machine—and we age it longer than conventional facilities so it can develop the fullest expression if its flavor.
As passionate as we are about producing our meat, we are just as committed to making sure our customers have a great experience buying it. Every butcher and server you meet in our retail stores and restaurants has deep knowledge of the product. They love sharing cooking advice or offering a menu suggestion that will ensure you enjoy eating our meat as much as we do providing it for you.
Our Farm
We raise our animals on our own farm in Gazelle, CA, in rural Siskyou County near the foot of Mount Shasta. Our farm has earned organic certification by California Certified Organic Farmers and is Animal Welfare Approved. Every day, we do all we can to ensure that our animals live a good life. We give them the freedom to graze on pasture and the opportunity to express their natural herd behavior. It’s this thought and care that allows Belcampo to raise the highest quality, most nutrient-dense, and fullest flavored meat possible. Here’s a bit more about our animals.
Cattle
Our cattle have been selected for their ability to thrive on a grass diet, and our breed mix includes Angus, Hereford, and Wagyu. We keep calves and cows together for the first eight to 10 months of the calf’s life, letting the pairs enjoy their days grazing, roaming, resting, and playing. Our beef is certified organic and is harvested at 24-30 months of age (compared to 18-19 months in conventional operations), which gives it a richer flavor and better marbling.
Chicken
Our chickens are free-range and allowed to grow at a slower, more natural pace, which gives them the opportunity to develop better flavor when compared to conventionally raised chickens. In addition to our meat birds, we also raise a wide variety of layer breeds that produce multi-colored eggs—full flavored with vibrant orange yolks—year round.
Swine
Our pigs are a cross of Berkshire, Duroc and Ossabaw breeds that we chose specifically to produce meat that’s rich in flavor, fat, and color. The swine forage in our tule wetlands and on forested hillsides of the farm, habitats that provide ideal natural environments for pigs. Since our pigs can explore and forage the diverse local landscape in addition to eating custom diets based on farm-grown cereal grains, our pork offers a true taste of the Shasta Valley terroir.
Sheep & Goat
We chose our hair sheep breed both for its meat quality and the breed’s natural ability to thrive on pasture. Our hair sheep breeds —Katahdin, Dorper and Navajo Churro—possess natural resiliency that supports our ability to raise them organically.
Turkey
We partner with BN Ranch to raise a limited selection of free-range, Broad-Breasted White and heritage turkeys. All birds are raised locally within two hours of the Bay Area eating only a variety of wheat and sunflowers—never corn. These birds roam freely, which allows them to exhibit natural behaviors and forage for food, ultimately producing full-flavored, succulent meat.
Butchery
It’s vital to our mission that we take a hands-on approach to every step of the process of getting our meat to you. That’s why we built our own processing facility, designing it to create stress-free handling of our animals.
Animal Welfare Approved Facility
Located not far from our farm in Yreka, CA, Belcampo Butchery is our own 20,000 square foot processing facility that features pens designed by Temple Grandin, the nation’s premier compassionate handling expert. Like our farm, our butchery is certified by California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) and Animal Welfare Approved (AWA). All meat produced at Belcampo Butchery is USDA inspected.
Traditional Methods
The butchers in our facility use traditional hand-cutting methods to craft the cuts of meat offered in our shops and restaurants. We hire and train our butchers in these artisan methods as part of our commitment to the re-professionalization of food jobs and because we care about how our meat is handled at every step in the process.
Farm to Fork Traceability
Because we own our facility, we have implemented a strict coding system that allows us to track our animals from birth to butchery to your plate. And because we always know exactly which animal each cut of meat comes from, you can feel good about its quality, its integrity, and its safety.