One of the most expensive types of meat in the world is wagyu beef.
People will spend hundreds of dollars to eat a wagyu beef steak.
You’ll often find the dish at expensive restaurants or restaurants that offer exotic dishes.
Considering that wagyu beef is just beef, you may wonder what about it makes it more expensive than standard beef.
Why Is Wagyu Beef So Expensive? (10 Reasons)
While American wagyu beef can cost around $10 to $15 a pound, real Japanese wagyu beef can easily cost $100 to $300 a pound.
Certain factors like the cost of raising wagyu cattle, Japanese standards for their beef, an increasing demand for wagyu beef, and high import fees all make wagyu beef expensive.
Let’s look at these factors in more detail.
1. Wagyu Cattle Have Expensive Diets
One of the primary reasons why wagyu beef is expensive is that the Japanese feed their wagyu cattle expensive food.
The cow’s diet is extremely important to the Japanese.
Wagyu is best known for its fat content and marbling.
To achieve this, the cattle need to eat a certain amount of food each day.
Low-grade food won’t give Japanese ranchers the type of meat they’re looking for.
As such, they need to give their cattle large quantities of high-quality food.
High-quality food tends to be more expensive than low-quality food.
It isn’t as common as low-quality food, so there’s an element of scarcity that adds to the price.
Since the investment in feed is higher, farmers sell the feed at higher prices to ranchers.
Those who grow their own feed still have to manage the costs of doing so.
Either way, because it’s expensive to feed wagyu cattle, ranchers have to sell the meat at higher prices to offset their costs.
Wagyu beef is expensive because it’s expensive to feed wagyu cattle.
2. High Land Costs
The Japanese have very high land costs for raising wagyu cattle.
One of the reasons why wagyu beef has marbling is that the cattle are able to walk freely in their pastures.
This helps them get plenty of exercise and work their muscles.
The problem with needing a lot of land is that it becomes very expensive.
Japan is a relatively small island compared to other countries, particularly the United States.
In the United States, ranchers are able to own and operate huge plots of land.
Their cows have plenty of room to walk around and stretch their legs.
In Japan, that isn’t the case.
They have a limited amount of land where cattle can just walk freely.
Because land costs are high, the Japanese have to offset that cost by selling expensive meat.
The scarcer that land becomes in Japan, the higher land costs are going to be.
Wagyu beef is expensive because land costs in Japan are quite high.
3. Lengthy Growth Time
One of the problems with raising wagyu cattle for wagyu beef is that it takes a while for them to grow.
The Japanese don’t typically slaughter their cattle until they reach a certain weight.
Wagyu cattle aren’t considered fully grown until they reach at least 1,500 pounds.
It can take anywhere from 400 to 450 days for a cow to reach that size.
This makes wagyu beef expensive for a few reasons.
The first is that it means that ranchers must keep feeding their cows for a long time.
It leads to higher feeding costs.
The more that a rancher spends on feeding, the more cost they’ve put into the cow.
To ensure the sale of the cow offsets their costs, they have to sell them at higher prices.
This also means that it takes longer for ranchers to generate a profit.
They have to wait more than a year before they receive a return on their investment.
Meanwhile, they have expenses to pay for.
They also need money to live on.
With all those costs adding up, they need to ensure that the revenue the cow produces can cover them between sales.
Staggering the growth of their cattle likely helps with this, but since it still takes a long time for the cows to reach full maturity, there’s always a bit of time to wait on their returns.
Wagyu beef is expensive because it takes a long time for wagyu cattle to grow.
4. Japanese Have High Standards For Their Meat
The quality of the meat you buy also determines its price.
When it comes to setting the quality of the meat, the Japanese have very high standards.
They use two different grading systems to determine the quality of a slab of meat.
Typical aspects that they consider include:
- Marbling
- Fat content
- Cutability and yield percentage
The Japanese don’t just look at how much fat a slice of meat has.
It also determines how much of the meat is actually edible.
For example, if the butcher has to cut away parts of the meat where the fat content or the marbling is high, then it doesn’t have a very high yield of quality meat.
The meat won’t receive full marks as a result.
The high standards make wagyu beef expensive because it adds just a bit more cost to the production level.
Each slice of meat is inspected to determine its quality.
Inspectors are paid for their work.
This also means that there are fewer cuts of wagyu beef that are high-quality.
Since premium wagyu beef is rarer to find, the price of those particular slices is extremely expensive.
Wagyu beef is expensive because the high standards that the Japanese use make high-quality slices scarcer.
5. Japan Has A Monopoly On Wagyu Cattle
Knowing the quality of their meat, the Japanese were quick to make it very difficult to export anything related to wagyu breeding.
The actual cows, eggs, and even sperm are difficult to acquire from the Japanese.
As such, one could say that the Japanese have a monopoly on wagyu cattle.
While there are ranchers in the United States who have made American versions of wagyu beef, they’re not the same as Japanese wagyu beef.
This makes the price of wagyu beef expensive because it means Japan can price their exports however they choose.
No one is able to provide the same product as they do.
Since they know that there are some people across the world who will pay a lot of money to buy and eat authentic wagyu beef, they have no problem selling wagyu beef at high prices.
Because no one else has access to Japanese wagyu cattle, no one can compete with them and make them drive their price downward.
Wagyu beef is expensive because the Japanese have a monopoly on wagyu cattle.
6. High Import Fees
If Americans want authentic wagyu beef, then they’re going to have to pay a high price for it.
That’s because the only way to get authentic wagyu beef is to import it.
While the Japanese won’t readily export wagyu eggs or sperm, they are happy to export wagyu beef.
The problem with importing beef is that it makes the price considerably higher.
For one, there’s always some sort of import fee or tax that must be paid for the beef.
That drives up the price of the beef even further.
Shipping wagyu beef across seas is also expensive.
It requires expensive containers that remain refrigerated to keep the beef from spoiling.
As such, those who buy wagyu beef also have to cover the costs of shipping it to the United States.
If all wagyu beef was locally raised, like some American versions of wagyu beef, then the price would be considerably cheaper.
Wagyu beef is expensive because of high import fees and shipping costs.
7. High Demand
Despite its expensive price, the demand for wagyu beef has increased a great deal.
People who have grown tired of their usual cuts of beef have discovered wagyu beef and fallen in love with it.
Restaurants looking to get in on the wagyu beef craze often advertise it.
People seeing celebrities and other A-listers eating wagyu beef want to emulate them and try the beef, too.
Because of its expense, some even see wagyu beef as a treat.
Since more people have an interest in eating it, it means the price of wagyu beef is increasing.
The Japanese only export so much wagyu beef each year.
When there’s a high demand for a product but not a lot of supply, it makes the price of the product increase.
There’s a lot of demand for wagyu beef.
Since the Japanese are unlikely to increase how much they export by much, the high demand for wagyu beef will continue to keep its price elevated.
Wagyu beef is expensive because it’s in high demand.
8. Typically Associated With Expensive Restaurants
Wagyu beef is not cheap for restaurants to buy and offer on their menus.
As such, restaurants that offer fine dining experiences or elevated menus typically sell wagyu beef dishes.
Other restaurants might also advertise that they’re selling wagyu beef dishes, but in reality, they’re likely selling American wagyu and not authentic Japanese wagyu.
The problem with expensive restaurants is that they might have high markups on their dishes.
They know that you’re paying both for the meat and the experience.
That lets them charge a good amount of money for their wagyu steaks and other dishes.
Wagyu beef is expensive but eating it at a fine dining restaurant makes it even more expensive.
9. High Wheat Prices
Wagyu cattle receive high-quality diets.
One of the staple foods that they eat is high-quality wheat or grain.
The problem with wheat is that it’s often prone to problems with drought.
The United States, for example, has been experiencing problems with drought which is affecting their wheat yields.
Problems in Europe have kept certain countries from being able to produce grain as well.
This makes wagyu beef expensive because it means Japanese ranchers have to spend more on wheat to feed their cattle.
Since they’re facing higher costs, they’re going to sell their beef at higher prices.
Wagyu beef is expensive because of the high prices of wheat due to drought.
10. High Rice Prices
Drought is also impacting the price of rice.
Rice is another common ingredient used to feed wagyu cattle.
Since rice requires around five inches of water to grow, a drought can severely impact its ability to grow.
Japanese farmers grow a decent amount of rice, but they also rely on imports from other countries.
California is the top rice producer in the United States.
Unfortunately, California has also experienced severe drought conditions that have impacted rice yields.
This makes rice expensive because it means there’s less of it on the market.
With wagyu ranchers having to pay more for their rice, they increase their costs for buyers.
Wagyu beef is expensive because of the high price of rice due to drought.
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