Why Olive Wagyu Is So Expensive | So Expensive Food | Insider Business

this is one of the rarest steaks in the world known as Olive wagyu it costs over 500 a pound which is almost 60 percent more expensive than other high-grade cuts of wagyu produced by feeding wagyu cows a special feed made from olives it's one of the most expensive meats you can buy [Music] um the technique of feeding olives to wagyu cows was actually only developed in recent decades and the steak wasn't always this pricey um so what makes Olive wagyu different from other wagyu and why is it so expensive the sun is rising over shodoshima in Japan's Inland Sea masaki ishi has been raising cattle here for half a century [Music] today literally small Bean Island was once famed for its azuki beans but after olive trees were introduced from Greece just over a century ago it became more famous as the home of Japan's oldest Olive Groves University [Music] wagyu beef is already known for its intense marbling and high levels of oleic acid both of which make the meat extra tender and flavorful masaki set out to create a wagyu even richer in oleic acids is but instead of using fresh olives I masaki turned to Olive promise the residue from olive oil production doing so allowed him to recycle a waste product from one of shudoshima's major industries [Music] [Music] [Music] Olive pumice still contains a lot of oil drying it is a difficult and costly process one that took masaki almost six years to perfect eternity foreign foreign foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] are typically sold to be processed at 24 to 26 months Olive wagyu doesn't ship out until 30 months the longer raising time and high cost of the feed make Olive wagyu difficult to come by but despite the limited Supply it has become especially popular with chefs foreign [Music] [Music] when masaki first started experimenting with olives he kept it a secret from his buyers [Music] but in 2010 an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Miyazaki prefecture devastated Japan's livestock industry despite successful efforts to contain the disease locally the damage was done countries like the United States suspended beef imports from Japan disaster struck again with the thohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011. as Japan struggled to recover and rebuild its economy masaki looked towards strengthening his prefectures beef production he led the charge towards working with more local Olive farmers in 2012 other Farmers unsure doshima started following masaki's methods to raise Olive fed cattle just one year later Olive wagyu began shipping to places outside of shradoshima and Kagawa prefecture [Music] today there are about 2 500 Olive fed cattle on shodoshima still this is nothing compared to places like kagoshima or miyasaki where high quality wagyu production has been taking place for decades on masaki's Farm there are just 20 head of cattle Yoni OS is [Music] to reach this goal the cattle farmers of shodoshima need help from the local Olive producers [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music]

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,410,021

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, wagyu beef, cattle farming, japan, Shōdoshima, olive wagyu, wagyu cows

Id: UptbRuiNIu8

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2023