Drath Family Farm

The Drath farm at Ogdensburg was established in 1940 and is a third-generation livestock operation. In 2013 the dairy gave way to 100 percent fullblood Black Wagyu, which is a bigger change than it sounds: a dairy is a daily business built around milking, and a Wagyu beef herd is a slow one built around animals that will not be sold for two years or more. The farm also grows ginseng, a Wisconsin speciality crop, alongside the cattle.

The cattle are raised on the farm on feed grown and harvested there, which closes a loop most producers cannot. Feed is the largest input in a Wagyu programme and the least visible on any label, so a farm that grows its own is answering a question about consistency that a buyer would otherwise have no way to ask.

Its own page tells shoppers to ask whether beef is 100 percent fullblood rather than a cross, and says that if a label does not say fullblood, it is not. That is blunt, and it is correct. Wagyu is not a protected term in the United States, so the word alone can sit on an animal that is half Angus or less, and the burden of asking falls on the buyer.

It is worth noticing who is saying it. A fullblood producer benefits from the distinction, so the advice is not disinterested. It is still the right advice, and the fact that the clearest statement of it on this pillar comes from a farm rather than from a regulator is itself the point: nobody is obliged to define the term, so the definitions in circulation are the ones producers choose to publish.

The cattle are described as DNA tested and traceable back to Japan, which is the ordinary claim for a fullblood herd and the one a registry exists to support. The farm notes that this is the same breed behind Kobe and Miyazaki beef, which is true of Japanese Black generally and is not a claim to either name: both are protected by where the animal was raised, not by its ancestry.

Beef is sold from the farm's own licensed facility, in cuts or as a quarter or half animal collected at the shop, and breeding stock is available. This is a producer bought in person rather than ordered online.