Patented Beef
Published in Gastronomica in Fall 2007.
Many people outside of Japan know of Japanese cattle, wagyû, by the misleading brand name of “Kobe beef,” which evokes images of beer-drinking heifers being massaged by attentive cowhands. Yet pampered cattle from Kobe represent only a sliver of the wagyû population in Japan. The entire breed is famous for the intricate marbling of fat and melt-in-your-mouth texture of its meat, leading some diners to claim that they can slice through the highest wagyû grades with chopsticks, as if through soft butter.
As the popularity of wagyû beef soars, the Japanese government has grown proud, as well as fearful. Foreign producers, especially in Australia and the United States, continually undercut domestic prices through their access to less expensive feed and land. For several decades, import quotas (and, later, Mad Cow Disease scares) cushioned Japanese beef producers, but the government now desires more concerted control. On December 18, 2006, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries suggested guidelines to secure control over wagyû by patenting its name and genetic sequencing. The draft proposal places Japan among other nations and communities around the world staking legal claims to their own “authentic” foods. It disabuses any notion that production techniques account for the meat’s delectability and instead credits Japanese breeding practices. The Ministry insists that the international community acknowledge wagyû as a Japanese invention, declaring that “Japanese beef is Japan’s unique property created by producers, researchers and related parties after repeated improvement. And it is necessary to recognize that wagyû is a Japanese treasure.”
The guidelines have four components. First, the Ministry calls for intensified research on wagyû genetics to discover and patent the sequencing that makes the cattle a distinctive breed. They hope in particular to isolate the specific genes that correspond to marbling and flavor. Second, the Ministry requests distribution control over wagyû semen by means of mandatory barcodes on every semen straw. If these two measures are approved, the Japanese government will have greater power to prevent beef producers outside of Japan from raising purebred wagyû for either their own or the Japanese market.
The third and most contentious recommendation essentially turns Japanese wagyû into a trademarked brand. It calls for a patent on the name wagyû, which would limit its application to those animals born and raised in Japan and recognized as one of four official breeds: Kuroge (blackhaired), Akage (brown-haired), Poll, and Shorthorn. This element of the proposal alludes to the idea of terroir—that like Champagne grapes, wagyû are irreproducible if not raised on the soil of their homeland. The Japanese guidelines also partially follow the example of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy granting “Protected Designation of Origin” status, most famously for producers of prosciutto di Parma in Parma, Italy. To abide by the E.U. policy, the Parma prosciutto producers must adhere to several traditional practices, such as adding Parmigiano-Reggiano whey to the pigs’ diets. By significant contrast, the Japanese Ministry has not outlined restrictions on how wagyû must be raised: there are no requirements of two liters of Asahi beer a day or twenty minutes of massage, and wagyû producers are free to use imported feed and raise the cattle as they choose. Finally, the Ministry recommends that wagyû producers continue to improve their heritage-breeding program.
It’s easy to get caught up in questions of genetic ownership and geographic origin. However, the Japanese patent proposal takes on greater significance when we consider that until only 150 years ago, the Japanese considered beef a ritually impure substance. For almost 1,200 years, from 675 to 1871, Imperial law forbade the slaughter of oxen and the consumption of beef. Buddhist and Shinto creeds both inspired and reinforced this cultural aversion. Draft animals pulled the ploughs in rice paddies, but when they died, their owners carefully buried their remains. Although there were notable exceptions, for over a millennium a large portion of the Japanese population did not taste red meat.
In the mid-nineteenth century, following U.S. Commodore Perry’s arrival, Japan was suddenly confronted by the industrial world, and after a brief period of indecision the country embraced industrialization and uninhibited Westernization. Political leaders with an agenda to make Japan into a “modern civilization” (bunmei) promoted the eating of beef as a literal and figurative means of strengthening the nation. For the powerful elite who declared its benefits, beef was necessary medicine for a weak body politic. For everyday citizens, beef was more problematic, a substance that smelled bad and felt noxious to ingest. Although eating beef seemed barbaric, the Japanese leadership pronounced it a means of remedying the country’s backwardness, and beef became a powerful metonym for Westernization.
As Japan’s political and cultural identity has evolved, beef has shifted in totemic meaning while remaining central to national ideology. With the development of a domestic cattle industry, the Japanese government has become even more invested in promoting beef. Wagyû cattle are the result of more than a century of selective breeding, first between the native draft animals and imported European breeds such as Devon, Shorthorn, and Brown Swiss, and later within the domestic stock created by several decades of crossbreeding. After World War II, wagyû became a symbol for Japan’s distinctive adaptation of non-native forms. The breed’s very fattiness expressed the nation’s postwar economic growth, as the Japanese, only recently starving, indulged in meat for sheer pleasure. Wagyû production emblematizes the dramatic political, cultural, and dietary shifts that Japan has undergone over the last century and a half. Beef has been transformed from a reviled to a revered substance, from a foreign intrusion to a national treasure.
On January 11, 2007, the Ministry presented the guidelines for public comment and subsequently published a revised version on March 26. The proposal is now awaiting review by Japan’s Fair Trade Commission. In its success or failure, the measure will have immense economic and cultural implications for Japan. In the face of fierce international competition, claiming wagyû as their own could allow the Japanese beef industry to survive. Will Japan secure wagyû as a cultural symbol, the epitome of Japanese luxury goods? Or will the tender, meaty animals become fodder for the world? The stakes are high.
