Our Core Values

Man walking through field with sheep and cattle

We understand we aren't the only folks selling high-quality meat and poultry online. We do, however, want you to understand how the dollars you spend with our farm impact the world you live in. If you're just getting to know us, allow us to introduce ourselves…

White Oak Pastures is a six generation family farm in south Georgia, pasture-raising 10 species of livestock, eggs, organic vegetables, honey, and other things. We do this on almost 5,000 acres of land, in a radically traditional way.

Our farm centers around three core values:

Animal Welfare

We provide our animals with a peaceful, healthy life, and we are also committed to offering them a humane and dignified death.

  • We raise our livestock on open pastures, allowing them to express their natural, instinctive animal behaviors.
  • We are one of the only farms in the United States to operate two on-farm USDA-inspected abattoirs for slaughtering red meat and poultry, so that we can provide a respectful and dignified end of life for our animals.
  • We are committed to a zero-waste model, selling meat to customers, turning unused products like hides and tallow into handmade consumer goods, and composting all inedible viscera to return nutrients to the soil in our pastures.

READ MORE ABOUT ANIMAL WELFARE

Land Regeneration

We believe farming must not only be sustainable, it has to be regenerative to rebuild our soil and mitigate climate change.

  • Our holistic planned grazing methods use animal impact to sequester carbon, control erosion, and increase the organic matter in our soils. Our farm is one of 23 accredited Global Savory Hubs.
  • A ground-breaking Life Cycle Assessment confirmed that our farm is storing more carbon in our soil than our pasture-raised cows emit during their lifetime.
  • Not only do we acquire and regenerate former commodity row crop land into perennial pasture every year, we have also partnered to provide planned livestock grazing and regenerative land management on a neighboring 2,400-acre solar farm.

READ MORE ABOUT LAND REGENERATION

Rural Revival

Bluffton, Georgia (population: 103) had experienced the same decline familiar to many rural communities, and the impact of our farm's growth over the past ten years on this small town has been dramatic.

  • We are the largest private employer in one of the poorest counties in Georgia. Our 155+ employees make a minimum of twice the county average and spend their paycheck eating, shopping, and living in the Bluffton community.
  • Our farm is vertically-integrated. We take full responsibility for raising our livestock, slaughtering and processing, and online order fulfillment on our farm, providing jobs for our community and ensuring we are able to do business according to our values.
  • We have invested in our community, building cabins for local tourism, opening an on-farm restaurant, and re-opening a General Store in downtown Bluffton (which is the only place within a 10-mile radius for locals to buy fresh food, a coca-cola, or a roll of toilet paper).

READ MORE ABOUT OUR RURAL REVIVAL

The Harris family prayer has always been, “We pray for plenty of good, hard work to do and the strength to do it.” Sometimes, it has taken all of our strength to do the work—but our family has been on this farm for a century and a half, and we are in it for the long haul.

If there was ever a time to know your farmer, it is now. There's never been more focus on the supply chain than there is right now, so when deciding who you want to support, we hope you'll choose us—Cowboys and Butchers working together on a 5,000-acre, six generation family farm, regenerating our land and producing food in a radically traditional way.

Chickens: Our chickens are Certified Non-GMO, Certified Humane, and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute.
Turkeys: Our turkeys are Certified Non-GMO, Certified Humane and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute.
Ducks: Our ducks are Certified Non-GMO and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute. 
Geese: Our geese are Certified Non-GMO and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute. 
Guineas: Our guineas are Certified Non-GMO and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute. 
Hogs: Our hogs are Certified Non-GMO, Certified Humane, and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute
Rabbits: Our rabbits are Certified Non-GMO and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute.
Cattle: Our cattle are Certified Grassfed by the American Grassfed Association, Certified Humane and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute. Some of our cattle are born on the pastures of our local producer group. All are harvested at White Oak Pastures on-farm abattoir.
Goats and Sheep: Our small ruminants are Certified Grassfed by the American Grassfed Association, Certified Humane and Certified EOV by the Savory Institute.
Laying Hens: Our laying hens are Certified Non-GMO, Certified Humane, Certified EOV by the Savory Institute and the highest Whole Foods rating for Eggs "Mobile Houses on Pasture."
Vegetables: Our vegetables are Certified Organic.

— The White Oak Pastures team