Japanese Wagyu Beef

From birth until sale, ranchers give their Wagyu cattle individual names, and nurture them like a part of the family. Wagyu’s fine flavor comes from the tender, loving care that goes into their breeding.

How Wagyu are raised

Weaned soon after birth, each calf is hand-fed a milk replacer. During cold weather, some farms even provide their calves with handmade jackets. Ranchers raise their cattle in barns instead of in large-scale feedlots, and give them individual names.

Cattle are fed by whole crop silage including rice straw, wheat straw, barley straw, corns, soybean meal, barley, wheat, and barley brans, beet pulp, beer brewer’s grain, and sake brewer’s grain. This combination diet is what develops Wagyu’s iconic marbling and white-colored fat.

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How Wagyu are Graded

Grading is divided into two main categories: yield grade and meat quality grade. Yield grades indicate the final meat ratio from carcass to salable partial meat, which earns either A for above average, B for average, or C for below average.

As for meat quality grading, a five-step evaluation is made on the following four criteria: marbling, color, shine of meat, firmness, texture, and fat color and shine.

Grade judgment is conducted by the combination of these two grading scales, varied in fifteen grades from A5, the best, to C1, the worst.

Proof of authenticity: Universal Japanese Wagyu Mark

In 2007, the Japanese government introduced a unified Wagyu Japanese beef logo to verify authenticity of high-quality wagyu exported around the world.