In summary, Wagyu cattle are astounding in yield grade and marbling, significantly superior in this respect to any other known breed. So why aren more farmers ranching them in America?
Simple. Not enough of a market. The massive supermarket chains (Safeway, Lucky, FoodsCo, etc) carry Select grade beef which has minimal marbling. They restructured and lowered the grading of beef itself at one point (I think in the 1940’s, but I could be mistaken on this) to reflect a more conservation conscious economy, because cattle fed out to a lower ratio of marbling were a more efficient return on resources. So today’s Select grade beef (which is below Prime and below Choice) is lean indeed, the equivalent of pre-war Good grade. While Wagyu beef has healthier fat (if there is such a thing!) and less waste backfat that American breeds, lean and skinny it is not, and the market for high prime beef is very limited in America. It’s fit to mass market only in Japan, so there it all goes, even if it’s largely ranched elsewhere these days. Annoyingly, when we in America want to purchase Wagyu, we have one of two options: we can buy it shipped back over from Japan at some insane cost per
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