April 2002

• Asahi Shinbun reporters visiting and interviewing in Australia.   (Click pic to enlarge)

Translated Articles from Asahi Shinbun Newspaper:

Australian based WAGYU landed into Japan

"Wagyu raised in Australia are imported into Japan."  This rumour tempted me to visit Westholme ranch around 200 km west from Sydney, when I was gathering information regarding a series of fake beef incidents these days.

Among the 3,000 head cattle I could find smallish black-shining haired 1,100 heads grazing, of a same kind as black-haired Wagyu's familiar to us in Japan.  To import semen and embryos of a Japanese origin via Texas and then raise calves of an Australian birth through 'borrowed womb'.     "It costs us too much but leads to a sure and constant arrival of Wagyu" a cowboy pronounced in a Japanese style.  Many calves of Wagyu called 'Kuroge' were nestled up to their dams of Hereford or Angus different from them both in colour and in appearance.

Sixty-two-year-old President Chris Walker, who works as a top management professionally for world wide CD selling giant HMV in charge of Asia and North America and for his own ranch in his homeland, said he started to export Wagyu's to Japan two years ago.  He happened to be back to Tarana, to our happiness.  He was tough on Japan's amoral meat sellers, saying that revelation of their wrong doings will turn out to be very meaningful.  He bitterly added that he had also been urged by a Japan meat dealer to sell 'fake Wagyu's' as pure blooded Japanese born one's by mating his Australian based Wagyu with Australian Angus.  Over 40% of Australia's beef, A$4.1B a year, is exported to Japan.  We can say Mr Walker's dogged pursue for delicious and inexpensive beef, reached Wagyu as a final conclusion.

Mr David Blackmore, 51, exports beef to Japan by mating Wagyu with Australian cattle.  He has 600 head of pure Wagyu but the number is short of exporting.  He is now considering export to Korea and Europe, not to Japan where beef prices have nose dived since the BSE outbreak.  He says everyone here is aware of the deliciousness of Wagyu, with a growing number of restaurants adding Wagyu meat to their menu.

I tried the taste of Wagyu meat at a restaurant near Brisbane.  "What do you say? Delicious?", a beaming feeder Mr Peter Kabassy, 35, said before thin sliced beef sashimi.  The red beef was finely marbled and its softness and smoothness spread within my mouth.

Inexpensive and tongue friendly Wagyu beef will be sure to be accepted by Japan's meat market, which harbours the risk of being mislabelled as purely Japanese born and fed Wagyu if Japan's consumers have 'no tongues' enough to distinguish the difference.

A young ranch owner based at the eastern part of Australia said, "We cannot take responsibility for how our high quality beef is sold in Japan".

A big surprise and sigh at the lamentable fake-prone country

With a strong summer end sunbeam scorching my skin, I kept diving for some one and a half hours along the road with steep slopes up and down for Armidale in south eastern Australia.  My destination was Rangers Valley where I could see, contrary to its name, a large grassland all around.  This ranch produces the beef that was sold as pure Japanese Wagyu beef, triggering a series of fake incidents at Kansei Meat Centre of Snow Brand Beef Products Company as far as around 7,500 km remote from this ranch.  That beef is now kept in the warehouse at Nishinomiya under the strict control of Hyogo Prefectural law enforcer.  This ranch has won a prize as the most excellent feeder ranch and is now run by Japan's big trading company.

MR Malcom Foster refused our proposal of an interview, citing as a reason that he had nothing to do with the incidents and so had nothing to tell.  After the incidents he has been suffering from the sales slump and doesn't want to be damaged any further, so he cannot say any more.  He was apparently sad and regrettable that their meat had been misused.

Any Australian ranch owner is speechless about Japan's beef fake, because here in Australia all cattle are individually recorded all through the course from birth to retail shops, making mislabelling of places and origin impossible.

I also visited fifty-two-year-old Mr Guy Fitshaarding in Maanjurama, south east.  Unlike in olden times, he sits down before the personal computer, not on his horse back.  He puts 3,000 head of cattle to grazing at his 3,500 hectre ranch.  An individual cattle has a plastic ear tag with an identification number, birthdate, genetic records.  Every record is formed into the database and then in cooperation with New England University near here to improve beef quality for the Japanese with marbling.  "In former days, we were used to judging everything only by the appearance of the cattle.  We could not even imagine this situation ten years ago", he said.

Then I visited the meat factory of Stockyard Pty, one hour away from Brisbane.  Crane hoisted carcasses were moving along the course at the clean factory's production lines just like at an automobile factory, taking 15 minutes at the longest till cut and washed meat reached freezing chambers.  DNA samples are taken individually without fail for identification in the event of doubts and questions in the process of distribution.

"Here, government never offers subsidies to meat manufacturers so as not to affect this industry", Mr Paul Sutton, 54, agriculture, wool and livestock ministry chief said.

Producers taking responsibility for any incidents are always sensitive to the move of Japan's clients.  Some of them are gathering information about Japan's fake beef incidents on the website of Asahi Shinbun in English version.

Mr Rocky Heart, 37 sales manager for Stockyard Pty, easily mentioned the names of amoral meat dealers, Snow Brand, Kawai, Hiruma etc, whose wrong doings had been uncovered.  "Are there any wrong doers?" he asked me and I answered "I am not confident about saying no" and he sighed.

An irony....Improvement in Australian beef quality 
makes fakes and mislabelling possible in Japan.

Freight trains twice longer than Japan's ones rumbled into the ports splitting ears and carrying 20 metre long containers with beef from all around the country.  It is said around 70% of Australian-produced beef for Japan is shipped at Brisbane.  It takes more or less 10 days to reach Yokohama, Kobe or Osaka Port in Japan.  Mr Ian Perterson, chief of sales dept. at Brisbane port, explained to me, saying that Brisbane has a mild climate fit for cattle feeding and beef production with a number of subsidiaries of Japanese companies.  He added that how to produce beef fit for Japanese people's tongues most interests Australians.

Mr Kenichi Kata, 53, Wagyu feeder and livestock dept. chief at Takachiho-cho agricultural co-op in Miyazaki Prefecture, visited Australia last July after 20 years absence.  He was much surprised to see that Wagyu's at a ranch in the outskirts of Melbourne had far higher meat quality, guided and instructed by Japanese experts, focusing on Japan's market with the same forage as in Japan.  "Its meat quality is still a little inferior to Japanese one, but it will never fail to spell a big treat to Japan's domestically produced Wagyu meat in the foreseeable future" said Mr Kato to me.

After the meat import liberalisation in 1991, Japan's food companies and trading ones, such as Nippon Ham, Itoh Ham, have put their resources and energy into production through their Australian subsidiaries aiming at mass and low cost production at the local ranches and slaughtering houses to ship direct to Japan.

Some Australian live cattle are also exported to Japan, where they are fed and put into Japan's meat markets.  Japan agricultural ministry's guidelines thankfully dictate that feeding within Japan over three months makes that cattle meat legitimately labelled 'made in Japan' which sells with higher prices.

"It's quite strange for us Japanese to easily eat Matsusaka (or Matsuzaka) beef at any time and at any place all through Japan despite its limited production" said Mr Daiji Imori, 53, President of E.T. Japan that had exported Wagyu semen till three years ago, casting doubts over the real landscape of branded beef distribution inside Japan.

The number of slaughtered home grown meat cattle has been on the wane in Japan since its peak of 1.58 million heads in 1985, leading to Australian based beef accounting for 1/3 of current beef consumption in Japan.  Under these circumstances, people concerned in Australia keep mum on the recent fakes in Japan.  A young ranch owner hesitantly said in fear off ill effects "never mention the names of our clients in your newspaper, or many bad effects may occur".  His uneasy remarks jogged my memories that an employee at the Kansai Meat Centre of Snow Brand Meat Products had said to me "This fake will be a perfect crime" while I was gathering information about this time events.

Australian beef quality, highly improved for the taste of Japanese consumers, was misused by Japan's meat distribution 'professionals' coupled with loose regulations and systems by Japanese government open or vulnerable to mislabelling of origin places and other fakes.

Mislabelling and other fakes in Japan will stretch forever as long as we the Japanese naively and persistently stick to well known brand names and labelling of 'Made in Japan'.

End

Attention Please: The spellings of the above proper nouns may be incorrect, only arbitrarily imagined by Ohsumi without consulting dictionaries.