Where’s The Tender, Trendy, Pricey Beef? Ellensburg Rancher Is King Of Wagyu In U.S.
As the myth goes, Japanese cattle ranchers feed beer to their coveted wagyu cattle, massage them to keep their muscles limber and play classical music to just plain keep them happy.
American ranchers eager to capitalize on the yen for wagyu are not yet going to such lengths. In fact, Gerry Pittenger at first glance doubted whether the animal was worth investing any money in, let alone suds.
“I almost gave up,” he said, “because I didn’t think they looked like good cattle.”
Pittenger has since become the largest wagyu breeder in the nation, raising the swaybacked, dainty-hoofed animals with a mix of technology and marketing in the hopes of putting them to use both here and abroad.
Considered the world’s best beef in some Asian circles, wagyu (pronounced “wah-gyou”) became a great hoofed hope for export-oriented Northwest ranchers about five years ago. With a richly marbled meat that guarantees flavor and succulence - and a price in Japan approaching $150 a pound for some cuts - one wagyu heifer raised at Washington State University fetched $55,000 in 1991.
Pittenger himself paid $31,500 for a bull at the same auction, the first-ever in the United States, in part to improve the quality of the Simmental beef he was raising on his ranch here.
The bull was part of a small herd kept by WSU scientists working to improve wagyu bloodlines and avoid the in-breeding that can result from a small parent stock. The school’s International Marketing Program for Agricultural Commodities and Trade, IMPACT, manages the herd with the Department of Animal Science as part of an effort to develop alternative markets for Pacific Northwest growers.
So far, the beef is available in only select U.S. outlets like a Japanese market in Seattle, Disneyland and Los Angeles’ high-end Spago Restaurant, said Des O’Rourke, director of the IMPACT Center.
“Even in Japan, it’s an expensive market,” he said.
The animals sold in the 1991 auction were descendants of four bulls spirited out of Japan in 1976 in an exporting sleight of hand that still remains a mystery. Since then, wagyu breeding stock has expanded substantially.
Pittenger, a retired Bellevue banker and longtime rancher, now has 600 head in Ellensburg and at an embryotransplant breeding operation in Ephrata. About 100 of them are 15/16 wagyu, which technically makes them purebred.
Other breeders have popped up in Pullman, Deer Park, Pomeroy and Genesee, Idaho. The Boise-based Agri Beef Co. last year processed and shipped 1,700 half-wagyu carcasses to Japan, up from fewer than 200 in 1993.
“We’ve made strides in producing animals that are similar to the Japanese wagyu animals,” said Shane Lindsay, Agri Beef export marketing coordinator. “We’re not there yet. We’re not happy with the quality we’ve produced. But we’re getting to the point where we can compete.”
Pittenger said it is tough to say how lucrative the wagyu market is just yet. His own ranch remains in the red, but mainly because he has been building his herd from year to year.
Agri Beef is reluctant to discuss figures. While the company’s seven divisions have annual sales of $300 million, the wagyu exporting division is third from the bottom in revenues, said Lindsay.
The best market, Lindsay said, lies less with the high-end purebred cuts - worth $16 a pound on the carcass in Japan - and more with half-wagyu hybrids that compete for the more mainstream Japanese consumer. While beef in the U.S. can cost 95 cents a pound on the carcass, he said, a half-wagyu carcass can fetch $4.50 a pound from a Japanese buyer.
Pittenger, a major supplier of breeding stock to Agri Beef, extols the virtues of breeding wagyu with American cattle to improve their tenderness, flavor, marbling and overall quality.
He’s also talking with Portland’s Widmer Brothers Brewing Company about using beer mash to feed wagyu that can be served in the company’s restaurant.
“I hope the beef turns out as well as their beer,” Pittenger said.
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