What's a Wagyu?

What's Australian Wagyu?

Wagyu As Defined In Australia and the World

Apart from small numbers of Red (Japanese Brown) Wagyu, Japanese Black breed genetics made up the overwhelming majority of all Wagyu genetic exports from Japan and underpin most international Wagyu beef production. But, in the ‘world’ as in Japan, there is no one international cattle breed called Wagyu. Instead, ‘Wagyu’ is understood to describe a style of highly marbled, flavoursome, and generally very expensive beef. An increasing range of related international cattle breeds are now involved in production of this distinctive beef style.

In Australia in 2016, cattle breeds and sub-breeds involved in Wagyu beef production include:

Japanese Black fullblood

Foundation of the Japanese industry, and widely known as Black Wagyu outside Japan, Japanese Black sires represent the ‘marbling gene foundation’ for most of the international industry. Pedigrees must be fully traceable back to Japanese ancestors. There is a small but growing Fullblood (FB =100% Japanese Black) Wagyu beef industry in Australia, with most FB herds built on expensive embryo transfer technology. However the majority of Black Wagyu production is based on outcrossing to other breeds, using Japanese Black sires themselves produced by joining several different Japanese Black fullblood strains. Each of these strains originated from unique Japanese prefectural herds with specific phenotypes.

Japanese Brown fullblood

Universally known as Red Wagyu outside Japan, this breed is substantially genetically different from the Japanese Black and is an alternative source of ‘Wagyu marbling’ genetics, reputedly with reduced marbling fineness but enhanced animal growth. Again, pedigrees must be fully traceable back to Japanese ancestors. There are two different strains of Red Wagyu in Japan, described in the Minezawa text, where photos are also available.

Composite Fullblood Wagyu

This is a relatively recent international market cross between fully pedigreed Japanese Black and fully pedigreed Japanese Brown. The combination potentially offers a growth increment over the continuous breeding of the smaller strains of Japanese Black fullblood. There is no ‘Composite’ equivalent in Japanese production.

Purebred Wagyu

Both in Australia and North America, Purebred herds are the result of joining fullbloods, usually Japanese Black but also JP Brown sires to another (base) breed, often Angus, then rejoining the crossbred progeny to additional fullbloods until over 90% fullblood content is achieved. All generations must be registered with AWA. This was a relatively economical route to large scale production of well marbled Wagyu-style beef given 1990s Australian and American herd commencement situations of very few fullblood sires and no fullblood female herds of commercial consequence. There is no ‘Purebred’ equivalent in Japan.

Polled Wagyu

Both the Japanese Black and the Japanese Brown are horned cattle. And although there is a numerically very small Polled breed in domestic Japanese Wagyu production (see Minezawa), the quite different, emerging international Polled Wagyu breed combines either Japanese Black or Japanese Brown (fullblood and purebred in both cases) genetics in an outcross targeting naturally polled sub-breeds, consisting of 100% polled progeny. Within the new sub-breeds, (Black Polled or Red Polled) the polled Wagyu sires may have high value in beef quality improvement in (often tropical) environments, breeding Bos indicus females, where subsequent progeny dehorning required after the use of (horned) fullblood sires can have severe welfare consequences. Polled breeding is also a seedstock industry response to humane lobby criticism of current dehorning practices. There is no equivalent in the Japanese Wagyu industry.

F1 or Crossbred Wagyu

F1 or crossbred Wagyu makes up the vast majority of international Wagyu beef production. Mainly Japanese Black sires are used over a wide variety of beef breeds to produce moderate marble score product. Angus are a major temperate zone outcross breed but the world’s Wagyu beef largest producers also cross both Black and Red sires to vast herds of Bos indicus females with high quality results. An additional large F1 Wagyu segment is dairy beef, produced by joining Japanese Black sires to Holstein females.