Destination Wagyu

This seller states that every Japanese A5 cut ships with certificate details carrying the A5 grade and a cattle ID. That second item is the one worth understanding, because it is the strongest traceability that exists for beef in any country.

Japan assigns every bovine an individual identification number and maintains a national database against it. The number follows the animal from birth through slaughter, and it can be looked up: breed, date of birth, the farms it was raised on, the abattoir. A grade tells you how a carcass scored; an identification number tells you which animal it was. Almost no other beef-producing country can offer the second, which is why an A5 certificate with a number on it is a different order of evidence from a marbling claim.

Ask for it if it does not arrive. A certificate without the number is a piece of paper about a grade, and the number is the part that makes the paper checkable.

Among the Japanese programmes this shop has carried is Kobe Wine Beef, and it is important to say that this is a genuine brand rather than a fudge. It comes from Hyogo Prefecture, from a producer that feeds grape pomace left over from winemaking, and it is a real named regional product with its own identity.

It is still not Certified Kobe Beef, which is a specific designation for Tajima-lineage cattle raised and slaughtered in Hyogo under the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association's certification, sold only through handlers on that association's register. Two Hyogo beefs, one certified name.

The problem this listing has had is not the brand, it is the surrounding copy: collection text has invited shoppers to choose A5 Kobe while the products displayed were Kobe Wine Beef, and this seller is not on the Kobe register. Read the product name rather than the category heading, and if a page says Kobe without saying Wine, check which one you are being sold.

The shop separates Japanese A5, Australian and American Wagyu explicitly and says so as a policy, which is a smaller virtue than it sounds until you have seen the alternative. Mixing origins under one Wagyu heading is how an Australian steak ends up being compared against a Japanese price, and it is common.

Its Australian side carries named programmes rather than a generic label, and it runs same-day delivery inside Los Angeles alongside frozen shipping further afield. For a first-time A5 buyer the useful advice on its own site is the correct advice: buy a small cut. A5 is eaten in ounces, and a full-sized steak is usually a mistake made once.