Wagyu

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Wagyū ( Japanese : 和 牛 ), sometimes also "Wagyū beef", is the name of several cattle breeds of Japanese origin. Wagyū simply means “Japanese beef”.

The Wagyu beef is as Kobe beef very well known, which so far is not quite correct term, since only the meat of the Wagyu cattle in the Japanese region Kobe born, raised and slaughtered brought up the name Kobe may wear . This can be compared to champagne or Nuremberg gingerbread . Of a total of around 774,000 Wagyū cattle slaughtered in Japan, only 3066 were allowed to be declared as Kobe meat in 2009.

Wagyu bull in Chile

history

A peculiarity of these "indigenous" cattle is that they have hardly been crossed in their long history. For centuries, until 150 years ago, they were used exclusively as workhorses in the rice fields and in mining. Since the Wagyu cattle never left the island nation, no nation outside of Japan knew of their existence. Consumption was forbidden in Japan under the laws of Buddhism. After the opening of Japan in 1868, the breed was optimized for use as beef cattle in its meat yield through breeding. With the accession of the Japanese Emperor Meiji to the throne in 1868, a new, clearly western-oriented society was formed. The opening took place on January 1, 1869 via the port city of Kobe, whereby the name "Kobe Beef" has become a synonym for the meat of Tajima cattle.

features

There are three common Wagyu races today. Japanese Black ( Kuroge Wagyu ), Japanese Shorthorn ( Tankaku Wagyu ), and Japanese Brown ( Akage Wagyu ). However, Japanese Black dominates the market.

Wagyū cattle are mostly black, although there are also red animals. They are medium-sized (bulls: 800–1000 kg, cows: 450–600 kg) with a well-developed shoulder and strong, clearly angled hindquarters. Alcohol (such as beer) is not fed to the Japanese farms. No artificial growth hormones are used and antibiotics are not used for prevention, but only for diseases that have already occurred.

Complex vertebral malformation (CVM) is a well-known hereditary disease .

Economical meaning

In combination with the rare occurrence and the slow fattening, the meat of the Wagyū cattle is not only a delicacy , but also a sought-after luxury product. For pure-bred Wagyū cattle, prices in the five-digit euro range are achieved. The kilogram Wagyu meat can vary depending on origin and section cost to well over 1,000 euros. It is only in recent years that gourmet restaurants have also been offering steak dishes made from Wagyū beef, which, given the purchase price, are around 50 euros (as of 2011).

flesh

In contrast to other cattle, the fat in the meat of Wagyū cattle is not punctiform, but evenly distributed in very fine marbling in the muscle meat.

The export of Wagyū meat, live cattle, embryos or seeds from Japan (for the destination Europe) has only been possible since mid-July 2014. Today's population outside Japan is descended from animals that were exported to the United States for scientific purposes in the mid-1990s. The largest herds of Wagyū cattle outside of Japan are in the United States, Australia, and Canada. In Europe, Wagyū cattle are only kept by a few breeders, in Germany the first Wagyū animals were born in 2006. In 2017 there were 140 breeders and keepers in Germany in the Wagyu Association, in 2019 there were 190.

See also

literature

  • Thomas Ruhl , Wolfgang and Stephan Otto: Good meat: product knowledge, stories, basic recipes and creative cuisine. Ed. Torch bearer, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7716-4405-5

Web links

Commons : Wagyū  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. Berthold Kohler : The Kobe cattle: A visit to a legendary animal . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 29, 2009
  2. Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (Ed.): The market for meat and meat products in Japan. February 2010, pp. 4–9 ( PDF , approx. 1.3 MB)
  3. Norbert Kuls: Edel-Fleischversand: The Gourmet Brothers . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 11, 2011
  4. Peter Wagner: Recipe for yakiniku from Wagyu entrecôte with Shirataki noodle salad . In: SPIEGEL Online . July 26, 2014. Accessed on July 26, 2014: "Since mid-July we have also supplied Europe, initially two importers in Germany and one each in Denmark and Monaco"
  5. More and more farmers in Germany are breeding Japanese Wagyu cattle. Allgemeine Zeitung , accessed April 23, 2017 .
  6. ^ Rhein-Sieg-Rundschau v. October 1, 2019, p. 8, Stefan Corssen: The Rolls Royce among cattle