Where’s the Beef
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Kobe beef fanatics, rest easy. The reports of mad cow disease in Japan will have no effect on the price of that primest-of-prime beef in America. It couldn’t possibly, because no beef or cow has been imported from Japan to America, by order of the federal government, since 2001, when Japan reported its first case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.
So the Toro of Kobe Beef at Megu? From California. The $41 hamburger at the Old Homestead Steakhouse? From Oregon. Or Washington. Or Australia. The restaurants guard their beef sources jealously and wouldn’t tell me which state or country the beef is from, but it’s definitely not from the Hyogo prefecture of Japan, which has its capital at Kobe.
So how can restaurants call this meat “Kobe beef”? The cows from Japan and America are the same species, known to ranchers as the Japanese Black Cow, but to most people as Wagyu. The American cows served in restaurants today as Kobe beef were imported from Japan in the 1970s. American Wagyu and Japanese Wagyu are essentially raised the same way: Wagyu cows are kept alive for 500 days, about double the lifespan of American beef cow, and they are fed the same mixture of barley and wheat. But since these cows are not raised in the Kobe region of Japan, they do not, technically speaking, become Kobe beef.
To restate it in S.A.T. terms: Kobe beef is to foreign-bred Wagyu as Champagne is to sparkling wine.
This may shock consumers who have been shelling out $300 a pound for a fine piece of meat.
By all reports, Kobe beef – or Wagyu, at least – is well worth the price. Cows were first brought to Japan from Korea and China in the second century and used as draft animals. Feudal territories prized their cows and bred them exclusively within the province. Grain-growing regions bred their cattle for overall strength and size so they could carry the harvest. Commercial areas bred them with powerful chests and forelegs for hauling carts.
But a few cows were kept aside by the Japanese nobility to be bred for meat. Over the course of the millennia, the Japanese so treasured their few beef cattle that they developed unique techniques for keeping the meat tender. In summer months, they stimulate the cows’ appetite by feeding them beer, and in the belief that a fine coat and tender skin means fine, tender meat, Japanese cattlemen massage the cows’ muscles with sake. A faculty member of the Department of Animal Sciences at Washington University and member of the American Wagyu Association, Charles Gaskins, assured me that the Japanese actually do all these things, though he was skeptical of their actual value.
So for nearly 2,000 years, Japanese ranchers have been improving the fat content of their best meat cows. Beef is graded for prime based on the fat in the shoulder muscle. American corn-fed prime beef has an internal fat content of 8%. The Wagyu blows that figure away: 20% to 28% fat content. The marbled meat is so rich that some American chefs won’t take the fattiest meat – it’s just too rich for their customers. The Japanese like to eat it raw.
The entire American Wagyu herd dates back to a now-forgotten Oregon cowman who imported four Wagyu cows to America in 1976.The low-fat diet fad of the 1970s ruined his experiment, and he eventually sold the cows to Texas ranchers, who kept them around as a novelty.
The descendants of those cows attracted new attention when American entrepreneurs began to consider exporting Wagyu beef back to Japan after the Japanese lowered their prohibitive trade barriers in the early 1990s. Ranchers found they could breed Wagyu cows on their own and crossbreed them with Angus cows to make a half-Wagyu that still sells well, but for less money. To expand the Wagyu gene pool, Americans imported another 500 cattle in 1993 and 1994 and used them to grow a large, commercially viable, herd. Even with the need to ship carcasses over 5,000 miles of Pacific Ocean, cheaper American pastureland and grain made American Wagyu beef significantly less expensive than the Japanese variety. Before the 2001 ban, American ranchers were selling most of their Wagyu carcasses back to Japan. Only a few American consumers and retailers obtained genuine Kobe beef from Japan.
And after the ban, the ranchers hardly missed a beat, as the Atkins diet single-handedly resurrected the meat industry and made it fashionable to enjoy rich, prime cuts of meat, like the Wagyu.
The Kobe beef label, with its air of exoticism, stuck to beef that came from Japanese cattle stock, whether or not the meat came from Japan. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has no official definition of Kobe beef, so the industry must police itself. Mr. Gaskins said the American Wagyu Association is considering a certification program for Wagyu and Kobe beef products, but it’s still in committee. The term “Kobe beef” has become sufficiently generic to refer to Wagyu beef, and most gourmands and chefs use them interchangeably.
According to Masayuki Shimura, manager of Inagiku, in the Waldorf Astoria, in Japan, genuine Kobe beef is denoted on menus with a Chinese character, but American-raised Wagyu is written in English. Meanwhile, American ranchers claim there is no taste difference between their Wagyu beef and Japan’s Kobe beef, and the pre-ban Japanese import figures suggest that they’re right. But you’ll need to travel to Kobe to find out for sure.