By Martin Chin
Wagyu beef, also known as the king of steaks, is the most expensive piece of beef money can buy. Made in Japan, a single cow can cost as much or more than $30,000. This high price is due to the care and the treatment of the cows, giving the most tender and fatty steak you can get.
In English, Wagyu translates to Japanese cow. Bred specifically for physical endurance, this gives the cows more inter-muscular fat cells, making the fat be evenly distributed in the muscle. To determine the price of wagyu in Japan it’s graded on two main factors, the amount of meat, you can get from that cow and the meat’s marbling score.
How Wagyu Cows are Raised
Wagyu cows are raised differently in each region and from farmer to farmer, but generally, they are raised by a breeder until 10 months old then sold to a fattening farmer. After being sold the Wagyu cows are given names instead of numbers and are able to roam and graze. Wagyu cow pens are often only shared by 4 or 5 cows as the farmers want a zen space for the cows to grow up in. Care for the pens can include monitoring noise levels, frequent water supply, separating cows who don’t get along, etc.
Wagyu cows are fed three meals a day and the diet of a Wagyu cow is usually a chopped grain meal with things like plant silage of kernels, corn cop mix, wheat, and other nutritional variants. Vitamins, minerals, protein, and sometimes vegetable oil are given to help soften the fat making the meat more tender. Some farmers may even go as far as feeding the cows Omega three and seaweed strips to help the cows not get exhausted from chewing. To help keep the cows relaxed some farmers may give the cows an alcohol-free beer, they can also brush and massage the cows, or even play them soft music.
How Wagyu Cows are Priced
To determine the price of Wagyu beef in Japan it goes through 4 different tests, beef marbling standard (BMS), beef colour standards (BCS), texture, and beef fat standard (BFS). This then is able to determine the score of Wagyu in yield grade measured in A grade, B grade, and C grade, and the meat quality grade measured from 1 to 5. Wagyu cows are taken so seriously in Japan that each cow carries a certificate and a unique ID number, and most of the time when you buy a piece of Wagyu beef it comes with a certificate of authenticity.
Yield Garde (A, B, and C)
Yield grade is how much meat can be taken from a Wagyu cow compared to the standard amount. To determine the yield score a calculation is used:
Yield Score
= 67.37 + 0.130 * area of rib eye (cm2)
+ 0.667 * thickness of short ribs (cm)
– 0.025 * weight of half carcass (kg)
– 0.869 * subcutaneous fat (cm)
+ 2.049 (if meat breed(a))
Beef Marbling Standard (MBS)
To determine the beef marbling score, a rib eye and its surroundings are checked to see the muscle to intramuscular fat ratio. Intramuscular fat is the white strips of fat you see in a steak. This is then given a BMS score of 1 to 12, with 1 being no marbling and 12 being lots of marbling the cream of the crop. In Japan the Wagyu marbling grade is numbered from 1 to 5, 1 being the worst and 5 being the best.
Beef Colour Standard (BCS)
The colour of the red meat of wagyu is also graded by the colour and the gloss of the meat. The colour of the beef is graded from 7 different colours and is ranked from 1 to 5. To get the best score you would want the red meat colour to be between colours 3 and 5 and have excellent gloss.
Texture
To determine the texture they check the firmness of the meat, what they are looking for is a decent amount of mixture to the meat, and being firm does not mean that the steak is stiff.
Beef Fat Standard (BFS)
To determine the quality of the fat it’s much similar to the beef colour standard in the sense that you need to measure the colour and the gloss, but also the fat quality. The colour is graded by a 7 colour chart, and overall is ranked from 1 to 5.
Types of Wagyu and The Cost
Wagyu beef can come from 4 different types of cows, Japanese Black, Japanese Polled, Japanese Brown, and Japanese Shorthorn. Primary Japanese Black cows are used for Wagyu, so for this, we’re going to compare the price of different 10 oz Wagyu ribeye steaks from Japanese Black cows to each other and a standard ribeye steak.
A standard 10 oz ribeye steak costs about 16$, while the cheapest A5 Wagyu ribeye costs $149, that’s an 831% increase in price, but the price of different A5 Wagyu can also vary from the cheapest being $149 and the most expensive being $349, a 134% increase in price.
All these factors make Wagyu beef the most expensive beef money can buy, but you can somewhat understand why from the process of raising these cows to the serious grading of the meat. Wagyu can also vary in price with even the most expensive A5 Wagyu being 134% more expensive than the cheapest Wagyu, while the cheapest A5 Wagyu is 831% more expensive than a standard steak. With that being said, would you pay the price to try Wagyu beef?