MEET THE OWNER

MIKE CALLICRATE

About Callicrate Beef

Our customers say it's like going back in a time machine.

After opening our Colorado Springs store, we received a call from a customer saying our beef took him back 40 years to the hearty flavor he remembered from the beef he used to buy at a locker plant in Texas. We immediately knew why. Roughly 40 years ago is when the beef industry began implanting cattle with artificial growth hormones to enhance performance. But studies have also shown that implants make meat tougher. We started our company to take our ranch-raised beef directly to the consumer and to insure careful handling all the way through the process.

We can improve income at the farm and ranch gate and still keep prices very affordable to consumers. The key is eliminating the cut taken out by big agribusiness corporations, mega-meatpackers and the big-box retail stores. So we can pass both the savings - and the quality benefits - on to you.

Pasture to plate protocol

• Good management and humane treatment of our animals reduces stress and prevets disease, making it possible to eliminate sub-therapeutic antibiotics in the feeding program.
• Herds are managed in an environmentally sustainable manner.
• No growth promoting steroids or hormones are used in our feeding program, resulting in more tender and flavorful beef.
• Our cattle are younger than commodity cattle, resulting in more tender beef with less connective tissue, eliminating the mechanical and chemical tenderization necessary with comodity beef.
• A slow, safe processing system that includes complete blood removal improves tenderness, flavor and safety.
• Linking our ranches more directly with our customers minimizes the distance from pasture to plate.
• All of our meat is source verified and labeled as "Born and Raised in the USA."
• We age our beef for two to three weeks to achieve optimal tenderness and flavor.