Kobe Cows Treated Like Pieces of Meat?
In an article on Gourmet magazine’s website entitled Raising the Steaks, contributing editor Barry Estabrook details the delights of tasting the heavily marbled Kobe beef, known as wagyu in Japan. However, the process of getting that meat is, he contends, not the romantic notion of massaged, pampered cows that the West has gobbled up. He asked around and got a slightly less palatable picture:
The animals were kept in some kind of crate, so there could be very little movement. They were very dirty from their own manure—and I know a dirty cow from a clean cow. It was disgusting, such a contradiction from what I’d read…
Traditional Japanese producers, Blackmore said, raise their 1,600-pound cattle in highly confined areas. “From the time they are a week old until they are three and a half years old, these steers are commonly kept in a lean-to behind someone’s house,” said Blackmore, “where they get bored and go off their feed. Their gut stops working. The best way to start their gut working again is to give them a bottle of beer.
The article contains some interesting history and comparisons to Western cattle-rearing methods. Truly food for thought.
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As for what I’ve seen in Saga prefecture, where the natives are eager to brag that their beef is second only to Kobe’s (take that with a grain of salt), the cows were in a rather confined area, but together, with a small yard to hang out and do their cow stuff in.
