Latest / Got Any Cows? / 47. Akaushi Wagyu Beef w/ Evan Carter of the Meat Dudes

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47. Akaushi Wagyu Beef w/ Evan Carter of the Meat Dudes · Got Any Cows?

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Got Any Cows Podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn all you can about the beef cattle industry, this is the podcast for you.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Seth Christensen.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: My company has sent beef cattle genetics to 45 of the 50 states and 12 countries around the world.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've had the chance to learn from some of the best and brightest in the beef cattle industry, and I invite you to join me for those conversations here on the God Any Cows Podcast.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hey there, this is Seth Christensen with the God Any Cows Podcast.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you guys being here today.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Wanted to let you know what we're doing today.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Today we are going to be releasing an episode I recorded with the Meat Dudes.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So Evan Carter from the Meat Dudes had reached out to me.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: They do a great job.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Unique podcast there, specifically focusing on Wagyu beef.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they're coming in with a lot of experience on the beef side of the Wagyu industry.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas I'm coming in with more experience specifically on the live side and specifically with red wagyu or or Akiyushi genetics.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: So really a unique opportunity there to sit down with Evan and talk about my experience from the live side of things, his experience from the beef side of things, and then how those two pieces relate.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's going to be a valuable conversation to listen to, to take a look at how investing in things like our genetics, our red waggy genetics, can yield that high-quality beef like what Evan with the Meat Dudes talks about.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So without further ado, invite you to listen to this episode of the Got Any Cows podcast that I recorded with Evan Carter of The Meat Dudes.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: And here it is.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Meat Dudes.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I am Evan, and I'm super excited today to be joined by Seth Christensen of Christensen Genetics.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Man, how are you doing today, Seth?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Doing fantastic, Evan.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you having me on.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, we I'm really excited.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, Seth, so you are such a passionate voice in the Akayushi and Wagyu cattle industry already.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're focused heavily on genetics breeding and helping uh producers improve the herd quality.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you also host a podcast called Got Any Cows, where you dive into cattle genetics ranching and have conversations with producers all over the industry.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I love it because I feel like we do one thing here.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: We talk to more of the public, and then you really help the industry.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm really excited to have you on, man.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and I want to get right into it and I want to ask you what your definition of Wagyu beef is.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, fantastic question, and appreciate you having me on, Evan.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, looking at Wagyu beef at large, I mean, Wagyu is gonna be such a broad spectrum of answers.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Wagyu can apply to anything that's got some Japanese origin to it.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, we've seen Wagyu applied to everything from an Arby's burger that's gonna be maybe a quarter Wagyu kind of a deal, and very much a commodity end of the of the spectrum, all the way on up to A5 out of Japan.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so all sorts of different things can fall under that blanket category.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: But Wagyu in its most basic sense just means Japanese cow.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: So anything that touches that is is gonna technically land within that category of beef, and and that's where I'm so glad to see you guys doing the work you do with the meat dudes to help people understand what that is.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: That there are a series of answers, all of which are correct as far as what Wagyu is, but helping people differentiate that and understand that, and and I think that's a fantastic thing to help folks uh understand the beef end of the spectrum, whereas my work could be more so with the cattle and the live animal.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean you hit it right on the nail, damn it, man.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like our mission is really to you know let people know that Wagyu is a spectrum.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes, like you said, from A5 in Japan all the way to F1 cross in raised in the States or raised in Brazil or raised in Australia or South Africa, right?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and there's also so many cuts inside the cow, and there's more stakable items in a Wagyu cow.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you got your full blood Denvers to your maybe your F1 cross New York strip to your purebred uh uh bavette, and so already it's a spectrum.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Some we look we like to tell people you can find something in this whole Wagyu spectrum that you're gonna enjoy.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: But something that we don't talk about all the time is that within Wagyu, there's different breeds.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so today we're gonna focus on Akaushi, because that's your specialty, all otherwise known as the Japanese red.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm excited to learn more because I really want to just do a deep dive into it and get all your opinions on it and get like the facts out there between you know the differences between it, between the black and the red, and just the whole breed in general.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So for people hearing the word Akaushi for the first time, like what exactly is it and how is it different from Japanese black wagyu that we mainly see over here in the United States?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So Akaushi literally just means red cow in Japanese.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: So very, very straightforward as the term wagyu is.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: So literally just red cow.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a separate and distinct breed from Japan.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at the two different breeds, the Japanese black and then the Japanese red or Japanese brown, which would be the Akaushi cattle, both of them are gonna give you that really high quality eating experience, uh, with some differences, with some nuances between the beef and some pros and some cons to either option there.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the live animals are gonna be distinct animals.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna be a little different as to the rate at which they gain.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna be a little different.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to look at them in person and you look at those animals, you could see if you sit you stood a black wagyu and a red wagyu animal side by side, or an Akiyushi animal side by side, obviously the color is different, but the differences don't end there.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: They are separate and distinct breeds.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the best comparison I have found for people that are more familiar with cattle or or with the livestock end, or that are coming from that, the world in which I operate, I guess, with with the live animal, would be if you look at the Angus and Herford breeds, which would be very, very common, very, very, I mean, established um breeds of beef cattle in the United States.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Both of those breeds are British breeds, so they came from the same part of the world and are gonna produce a relatively similar end product, not the same, but similar.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but they are two separate and distinct breeds.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: So Angus and Herford, they're both British, but they are separate breeds.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Aki Uchi and Black Wagyu are both Japanese breeds.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're both gonna produce wagyu beef, but they are separate and distinct breeds of cattle.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, so so the Japanese black is most of the wagyu that you see in the US is Japanese black.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's is most of the wagyu in Japan Japanese black, or is it more evened out over there as well?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the Japanese black are gonna be the dominant breed.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna see more of those cattle.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you look at the number of original imports, I'm not gonna say, you know, exact, exact number, but based on on what I've seen as far as imports, the animals that left Japan and came to the United States, you'd be roughly 150 black wagyu animals, you'd be roughly 20 all in, all done, red wagyu or Akayushi animals.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So um that you would see significantly more black wagyu influence here in the United States.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I'm not gonna speak for Japan and for their industry, but I would say that's gonna be reflective overall of what you'd see coming out of Japan as far as the black wagyu being dominant there as well.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: So what made you decide to focus on Akaushi cattle specifically instead of going maybe the more common Japanese black?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so for me as a livestock producer, and and you know, I'm so glad to be here with you, someone coming in from the meat end and with your expertise and your set of experiences, coming from the beef end, and then I guess approaching the live animal, my experience would be just the opposite.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm coming from the live cattle, where all of my focus is on the living, breathing animal, and then I really truly am still educating myself on the finished product end of things.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So an exciting conversation to have here.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: But relative to your question, why Akiyushi?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what got me an Akiushi?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So my background would be more so in Angus cattle, so a lot more common breed of beef cattle in the United States, kind of the baseline uh that'd be the dominant breed of beef cattle in the United States is Angus.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'd have requests for years from people saying, hey, we'd like to get into Wagyu, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love to have the beef.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, everyone's heard about it, everyone would love to try it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's not anybody you'd run into you say, hey, would you like to try Wagyu beef?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: They say, Oh no, you know, I I wouldn't like to try that, you know.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone would like to try Wagyu beef.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, part of my challenge as far as you know entering that Wagyu beef realm, like I mentioned, the red Wagyu or Akiyushi and the black wagyu cattle are distinct animals, they're different animals from a live animal perspective.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: So on the plate, they're going to be quite similar.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And again, some differences there.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but both produce wagyu beef, but they're quite a distinct animal.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: So when I had people say, hey, I'd love to get this wagyu beef, I said, look, I'd love to sit down and eat it with you.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I love that finished product.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, wonderful eating experience.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know that the black wagyu cattle, from my production standpoint, fit what I was targeting with the live animals, right?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Your black wagyu, they are a separate and distinct animal.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Your growth curve is going to be distinct.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: The physical body type, as far as what the animals look like in the flesh, is going to be distinct.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or I should say more different from conventional breeds like Angus than what red wagyu or okayushi is.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, it actually ended up being there there was a day that there was a local hay farmer here in Idaho that said, Hey, I am looking at getting into these Akeushi cattle.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't know cattle at all.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: He just knew hay and wanted to find a way to improve the value of that, running it through these high-end cattle.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: But he says, I need someone to come source or sort on these cattle for me.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So he said, Hey, let's let's uh I'll I'll hire you for a day.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Come in and be my genetics expert, you know, and sort these cattle and and get me these Akiushi cattle.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd heard of them, but had never seen the Okeyushi animals.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is at a point in time where, I mean, like I said, years of requests for Wagyu beef, but I just hadn't found the animals, the live animal that maybe fit as far as a way for me to get to that Wagyu quality beef endpoint.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I went up this day with this this hay farmer, and I went up, frankly, expecting to see cattle that looked like the Japanese black, right?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: That that might be a little frailer built or a little slower growing, just a distinct animal.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're a separate animal from the conventional beef breeds.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And when I rolled into this pen of calves, um, and saw a pretty darn impressive set of calves.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: These have been F1s, so half Aki Uchi cattle, and I asked the operator there, I said, So, so where are your Japanese cattle?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was looking for these, you know, frailer-built, slower growing things.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, No, these are them.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, that that was the light bulb moment for me.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was the moment where I said, Look, we can we can get this wagyu quality beef, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or we can get this above and beyond beef eating experience, yeah, but we can get there with cattle that are more like unto the the Angus or more like unto the the Herford or more like unto these conventional breeds, a little bit faster rated gain, a little bit more muscle mass.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that was an aha moment of saying, hey, these are there's some unique value to these animals when they're a beef product and when they're a live animal.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I'm in Akayushi as as opposed to flywages.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do hear that a lot.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I do get that a lot from the from the Akuchi ranchers.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: That they're like they they are very rancher friendly.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have heard that a lot, that they're they're a lot easier to to manage and to and to grow.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, I that's something that you know, whenever I talk to somebody, they bring that up a lot.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're very proud of that.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: I hear it.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: What about so a little bit on the eating experience though?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get into that, like what would be some of the main differences in the eating experience?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're both gonna be marbled because they're wagyu.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're both gonna be tender, correct?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, perfect.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So what is it?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get yeah?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: So so they are they are definitely both, I will absolutely say both produce a wonderful beef eating experience.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Both red and black wagyu put an awesome steak on the plate.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I I think it's important, and like again, just to compliment the work you guys are doing, to educate people that hey, yeah, there's a whole series of different options here, and there's not a one size fits all in Wagyu, right?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are differences.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's differences between how these cattle are bred, like we're talking here with Aukushi and Black Wagyu.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's differences in how you feed these cattle, there's differences in age or weight at harvest, difference in how you cut them, difference in how you cook them, and all of those things are gonna impact that final beef eating experience.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So when we look at the difference between red and black wagyu, I would say the commonality between the two, in both cases, it is gonna be above and beyond conventional beef, right?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: It it is in both cases, red or black wagyu.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's fantastic.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like that there is no going back.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what once you get into red or black wagyu, yeah, in both cases, I mean, I went from frankly, any three-legged Holstein would work.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, any any junk cold cow was fine growing up.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, now we're ruined.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're total meat snobs, absolutely, both produce an awesome beef eating experience.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some of the differences you'd see between the two, I mean, if you're chasing just absolute maximum marbling, um, the the black wagyu is probably gonna be the more ideal of the two fits.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: If the whole goal is just marbling on marbling on marbling, yeah, and it's okay that we're gonna sacrifice some things on the live animal side, then black wagyu is probably the better fit there, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: So looking on the plate, the most wildly marbled steak is probably gonna be your black wagyu.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: The red wagyu is distinct, though, and for me, is is my preferred eating experience of the two.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And again, for me as an individual, and that's where I think it's so important for people to understand it is not a one size fits all.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is not A5 or A5, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: That there are different fits and different applications for these things.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, I prefer a little bit beefier flavor profile.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: I prefer something that is, I mean, that you can tell this is a steak, right?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: When we get all the way into the black wagyu, the Japanese have done such a wonderful job of producing, you know, a unique eat beef eating experience.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you go to Japan and consume beef, you're gonna take little tiny slices and you're gonna flip it either side on a hot plate and eat a little tiny slice, right?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so rich and so incredible, and they've done this wonderful job, right?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: But frankly, I'm a red-blooded American male and I want a steak on the plate.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if you take a full-on A5, it's a lot.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm not saying it's not awesome, but that's a lot.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and for me, yeah, the the the red wagyu ends up sitting in this, or this Aki Usian product, sitting in this wonderful spot for me and for my palate.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not claiming to be any chef by any means, but for me, when I sit down to dinner and I want to eat a quality steak, you've still got that solid beef forward type flavor.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is above and beyond uh what Angus is gonna do, but then it is still in the realm of reason.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's still a steak.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't crossed over into this whole separate realm of this A5 type finished product.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I really enjoy about consuming a red Wagyu steak.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's all my wife will let me put in our freezer now.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I get it.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I love that the Wagyu is such a spectrum.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like it's like I get upset.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get upset, but like I get annoyed when people say, Oh, I don't like wine, or I don't like, you know, a whiskey.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, well, there's so many different types, you know, there's so there's such a a spectrum of of of how where it's raised in the terroir.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we're experiencing that right now with what we're doing, is we're creating a wagyu beef map from all over the US, and where people can can search their favorite Wagyu beef.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: They'll search, I want Akaushi, I want grass-fed, I want F1 cross, I want these genetics.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and these are going to be, you know, registered by an association and then approved by us.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll make sure that people get amazing Wagyu that it's that's a verified, basically.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: But also we want to showcase that there's so many different types.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I love talking to you about this because, like you said so many times there that this is great for me.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some people may love a full blood uh black New York, and that's all that they want to eat.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's totally cool too.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I love to have an F1 cross Denver sometimes, you know.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I might want to have a uh 50% black, 50% red, you know, full blood Wagyu, you know, Bob Egg, you know, or flank steak or something.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's so many options in it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredible to me that we're kind of like we're starting to push this out a little bit more because the general public still has no idea.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: They think it's A5 or it's fake, most, most people, right?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so appreciate like I mean, I I just to reiterate, I mean, I think we're the third time, but I think it's wonderful what you're doing because I think, I mean, when I look at so so for me in AG, you know, I mean, it it's I'm in the 2% of the United States population that touches food production, right?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: The other 98% of the US population is on the consumption end.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And if if in their head that WAGU means, well, it's A5 is WAGU and everything else is is fake, you know what I mean?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or it's not A5.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's good to understand those differences, right?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: But to understand that there is a place for Wagyu and for me and what I prefer to eat.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite place is in between the two points.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the conventional or commodity beef or Angus, which would be your most, which still is a great steak.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: But but it's more the baseline.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's what people are used to in the United States.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: But nor is my favorite thing to eat all day, every day, a five.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, mine sits in between the two points.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that's what makes these Acu should unique is we're saying, hey, these can marble and produce that finished eating quality that is above and beyond what I can get, even with quality Angus cattle, which I still breed.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then my growth curve and some of those convenience traits and things for the live animal are above and beyond what I could get from from the black Wagyu options.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so it fits in a really happy spot for me as a producer and consumer of beef.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's great to help people understand what that is.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, and that's exactly that's kind of why we came to the scene here.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like you said, there's 2% of people that are producing, and then 98% are consumers.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and with especially with wagyu, it's such a young industry.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, granted, yeah, a few animals came here in the 70s and then legally came here in the 90s, but still to the general public, it is a very, very new, fresh, new industry in the United States.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so people are starting to hear those buzzwords and they're and they haven't heard them enough, so they start to you know get the misconceptions in their heads, so we've got to keep kind of reiterating this that it is a spectrum.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: I get comments all the time that, you know, Wagyu in America is fake, or you know, or somebody the other day said Wagyu isn't a breed.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, like I understand that there's breeds within a breed, but like, are we trying to like what are we doing here?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're in the white industry, are we confusing the hell out of people?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like they they already think it's fake, so why are we arguing with each other about the this verbiage and that verbiage?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we need to just make it as simple for people to understand, like red Wagyu is going to be maybe not as marbled as the black, but it's gonna have a really amazing eating experience for somebody who doesn't want to have super marbled beef, and it's gonna be super tender and maybe even a little bit beefier.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then the black is gonna be very marbled and it's gonna be and it's gonna look beautiful and it's gonna and it's gonna shine on your plate when you when you you know in for a great celebration, and and there's just gonna be these these differences, and that's okay.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And doesn't all for sure the other, right?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or one's faith wag you.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: So oh, for sure, for sure.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and when you and I had first talked, you know, and and talked about getting on and doing this podcast, I think I'd shared the the story with you about the the tequila distilleries down into Mexico there.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'll share that here just because I think it it drives home this point of being different is okay, or there's some different approaches to all of the above, right?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Different, even within black or red wagyu, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Each of those breeds is separate and distinct.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the very, very, very best red wagyu as far as marbling will outmarble the bottom end of, again, a spectrum within the black wagyu, right?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so if we so we take, now we're breaking it clear down to the realm I operate in, right?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Of genetics, there's a scope there too, right?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's red wagyu that are geared more towards growth or geared more towards marbling.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Same with black wagyu.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: There'd be black wagyu that are geared more towards growth or more towards marbling, or a series of different traits that we as breeders select for.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: But to come around to that story from Mexico, because I do think it illustrates exactly what you're talking about here, um, I went down and judged a show in in Mexico.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I was there just on a cattle trip.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And while I was there, I was in Guadalajara, so we're in the state of Jalisco, and all of your tequila in the world, for it to truly be tequila, comes from right there.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, it's like you talk about champagne, it has to come from France, right?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or else it's uh whatever champagne not from France is called.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And tequila, I mean, there were a thousand different brands of it right there.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all right on top of each other.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And how could so many different brands, they're all tequila, but how could so many different brands exist?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so interesting for me.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: This distillery we went to was taking it above and beyond rather than just say, hey, this is this is the brand of tequila, or this is just the year or the vintage of tequila, they were stamping right on the bottle.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, literally the field it came from, you know, because every little bit of the production of any given food product does impact the final eating experience.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so, or in this case, the final drinking experience.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so looking at this tequila that they were distilling, I mean, they were talking about it came from this place on this year, bottled in that location, you know, and all those things are going to nuance that that final consumption experience.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so talking about, you know, black wagyu, red wagyu, these different breeds, or different, again, in even individuals within the breeds, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're starting all the way clear back at the genetics.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's an entire industry where I make my living that that's in genetics, right?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: So even just selections within the breed, all of the differences between individuals inside of red wagyu, right?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, the uh I mean, for case in point, there's a bowl that we use that at the Houston Livestock Show actually out-marbled all of the black wagyu entrance for that individual, right?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not gonna say I'm gonna say as a breed, yes, your average black wagyu is gonna be higher marbling than your average red wagyu.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, both are above and beyond the average Angus, but then for individuals within it, you can have the very top end of the spectrum maybe crosses over the bottom end of the black wagyu spectrum.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, all of what I do in genetics impacts the eating experience.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: All of what somebody does in feeding impacts the eating experience.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: All of what somebody does for butcher work and then all of the work that you guys do.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you talk about the way things are distributed or the way they're prepped or whether it's fresh or frozen, all these different things impact that eating experience.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's okay to lean into that.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of saying, hey, it has got to be there's only one right way to breed them, and there's one right way to feed them or harvest them or one right way to eat them.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: There are a fleet of options, and I love what you're doing, like with your wagyu map, to say, hey, these are different products, they're all wagyu.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: But they are different products, right?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: With different things going on at each location, and it will give you a different eating experience.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And what is the best for one person isn't necessarily the best for the next.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that is okay.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think people should lean into that.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're totally right.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that and that is a big reason for the map because you know, we were down at CattleCon and we were cooking a hundred Wagyu steaks from eight different ranches all over the US.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we did a hundred steaks on one pan in two days.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we realized they they cook differently because this Oklahoma full blood cooked differently from this Florida F1 crust to this Indiana, you know, uh barley finished, right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just the way that they're finished, the way that how long they're on pasture, um, everything tastes different and it cooks different, and there's so many, it's so many nuances in between this, and these were all just Japanese black.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we had any Akuchi that day.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I mean, yeah, there's this the spectrum is is wild.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I just I love talking about I love hopefully getting the message through to people that there's more than just one way to do it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, the way that you cook it, the way that it's packaged.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, from from what you do all the way to it gets to the plate, um, there's so many different things that could happen.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's what you know, that's what makes it special.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's what makes it different.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like just like in Jalisco, making the making the tequila.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's this there's so many different ways to do it.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just, oh, tequila comes from Mexico.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, whoa, no, like, I mean, technically, yes, you're right, but like, what about how do we get it from the agave plant to, you know, to your to your cup?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then there wouldn't be a thousand brands that existed there if only one way worked.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: If well, it has to be this way or this way, or that is all, you know, and all thousand of those are right there, and there's enough differences to to to drive demand for a thousand different brands of tequila right there.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I think it's okay that people say, hey, don't just try to be Japan.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, frankly, if somebody, if all somebody wanted was Japanese A5, they're better off to just buy Japanese.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: If that's what they want, it's great, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Go buy Japanese A5.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Why does everyone else that ever produces a beef product, period, that happens to have some Japanese genetics in play need to be Japanese A5?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if all you're trying to be is a ripoff of what they already are, why would someone not just go there?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's okay to lean into, hey, Oklahoma, does it differ from Indiana, does it differ from Florida?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here in Idaho, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have different genetics, different feed, everything else.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that you can lean into that and say, this is what our ranch provides for a bee feeding experience.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: When people come here to Idaho, um, they're gonna they're gonna eat a red wagyu steak if they come visit my ranch, right?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's gonna be distinct genetically.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be specifically genetics from my ranch, right?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or things produced right here, so distinct there.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be finished on a different ration just based on what's available here in Idaho.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: So really heavy alfalfa influence for us.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're a major alfalfa producing area.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I actually cook, uh I cook in the Sous V.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so not everybody's gonna do that, not everybody's gonna like that.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I don't claim at all that that is the way to do it, but I do say I am not a chef, right?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And sous V is idiot proof, which is awesome.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like there is no way to ruin a Sous V steak.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so while someone here is gonna be eating this red wagyu steak through the Sous V, we're gonna cut through a series of different cuts so they can get a feel for the different cuts on the individual animal.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those cuts are so distinct, right?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: On the exact same animal.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: But to give people a feel for that, now I'm not gonna say that is the very best beef they've ever had anywhere.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: It may or may not fit anyone's palate but mine, but it will be distinct to this ranch.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I encourage our clients that are buying cattle from us and working to produce their own beef, lean into what makes your beef unique, right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: People don't come to you to get the same thing they got somewhere else, they come to you to get what you have to offer.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's okay to lean into that.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that, man.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I I've always kind of said that I love the American wagyu because it's very boutique y from wherever it's at, right?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I just say kind of Australian is a lot more consistent.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's great too.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I think uh what I love about the US is that it's so many different climates and and feed styles and all the different genetics, you know, and and I love that, yeah, Oklahoma does this and Indiana does this and LA does this and all through.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have four or five people on the map that are going to be from Texas, and they all taste differently because of how they plant and where they're located in Texas and the type of genetics that they're using, right?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just it's not just Japanese black and Japanese red.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's genetics, like you said, within those breeds.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so people that I talk to would say, you know, I love this genetic, this is the best.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the next person I talk to, I love this genetic, this is the best.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that because it really showcases like what people do, uh what they love to do and why they're doing it, um, and and yeah, and how they're finishing with their feed, and and they're they're trying to create something on the uh at the end of the day that that they love, that they're proud of, that they can feel good about.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's beautiful, man.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it's like that's why Waigu is such a spectrum.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna taste differently wherever you go, man.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: And like we keep saying, that's okay.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's totally okay, man.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, absolutely.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Akushi, you know, gets talked a lot about its uh fatty acid profile and health benefits.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you kind of fit?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I like that's a question.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you fit on the whole health benefit kind of conversation?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'll tell you, I mean, I think one of the things I most appreciate about kind of the the health benefits piece for me, now I don't claim to be a health guru, right?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I my my body style or body type would be like curvaceous at best, you know.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't exactly call myself athletic, right?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not gonna come on here and pretend to be a fitness influencer because I'm not.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: But when I look at the health benefits of this beef, I think one of the things that that's fun and unique for me, uh, just on the consumer end of things, is uh, you know, most in most cases when it comes to food or food choices, period, it can be healthy or it can be delicious.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: It is an either-or proposition.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, quite often it is healthy and it is gross.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or it is delicious and it's trying to kill me, you know?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the things I most appreciate about Akiishi beef is we say, hey, not only is this healthy, but it is also delicious, right?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And sits in this kind of unique spectrum to say, hey, rather than have to be an either-or proposition, which with most food choices, you kind of got to pick.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, do you want it to taste good or do you want it to be good for you?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and this is such a fun and unique space to say, hey, this is both healthy and delicious.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and what it what a unique product offering in that sense.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know, I know.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it is, you know, we we get into it a little bit.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're I'm trying to not not just claim all this stuff, but kind of like trying to get into a little bit, see what people's perspectives is are about it, because I feel like there's a lot of information out there.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: I talked about this with uh Dave from Booth Creek.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, there's a lot of information out there that we can pull studies and say, yes, this is this is fact, and this is fact, and this is healthy, and the fatty acid profiles and the balanced omegas and all that stuff.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I still feel like to the general public, it's not uh it's not there yet.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like they don't they're not there, they don't believe it yet.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I and maybe that's we just need to do a better job of compiling that information and going, okay, this is this is it.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I know a couple people like uh the World Wagyu Council, they're really working on like creating a document and pulling a lot of stuff together to like kind of push that out even more to the general public because once people do realize that it is, you know, as healthy or maybe maybe as healthy as a salmon fat, you know, um and avocado and olive oil, um, maybe they'll be a little bit less discouraged to to try it.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because right now, you know, if you hold up a raw steak black or rakaushi to somebody, you know, they're gonna be like, that's fatty and uh that can't be good for me.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, all this stuff coming out, man, I don't know.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think once it does come out, like once it's like finalized and we can really just get it out there, I feel like it's just such a game changer.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: It would just be absolutely that's and I think you know it's it's it's we're definitely swimming upstream a little bit on that one, you know.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've kind of got we got 50 years of of uh, I don't know what the proper term would be, but but I guess the perception that that fat is bad, right?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, especially if you go back as far as, you know, like the 80s, etc.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, really pushing lean proteins, lean proteins, lean pro and that's still definitely prevalent.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even in some of these health type circles, or we're saying we're going lean, we're going lean, right?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, frankly, like if I'm sitting and I'm looking at health or looking at athleticism or my lack thereof, right?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like what I'm targeting in myself, right, or in my body would would be lean, right?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you say, well, we're we're gonna consume fatty, but it's gonna be good for you, I I think it it can be hard that there's maybe some pre-established misconception saying, like, well, because there is fat, it cannot be healthy, right?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I think uh yeah, helping people understand um the benefits of those different monounsaturated, saturated fat ratios, and like you mentioned, the the different fatty acid profiles, and and it is just a completely distinct product.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, if people have the chance to look at truthfully in any Wagyu beef, right, and more so the further, I guess, up that spectrum you get as far as more marbling, any and all Wagyu beef is gonna be different to look at.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna have a different fat melting point, it's gonna be chemically different, right?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's some different health benefits that way.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna look different, smell different, taste different.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like it is a different product.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I think if people can understand, hey, there's an opportunity here in Wagyu at large to produce a superior product.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And for me as a live cattle producer or genetics producer, there's a way to do that cost effectively and and rancher friendly, to use your term there, as far as as easy to handle cattle, it makes it a really nice entry point um in the Akuchi cattle for that 98% of people that haven't ever engaged in production agriculture to say, hey, these are a pretty darn easy or you know, user-friendly way to get into producing a genuinely superior, healthy, delicious beef product.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, man, absolutely.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, to back to your point about you know, a lot of people raising for uh raising wagyu for the most marbling.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I totally agree with you when we're talking about how it's gonna be you know something for everyone.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and we still need to make sure that the wagyu tastes good.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what like you know, I we're we gotta raise for flavor and not just marbling.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes in within the industry we get a little crazy and we're like, uh hey, guess what, guys?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Look at this, you know?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, man, we're American, so more is always better.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but like most of the people out there are you know are not looking for that, you know, and or it's a total celebration thing, and that's and that's and that's awesome.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, do you think the future of Wagyu in America?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this is my question, um, is going to be more about finding your preferred style of Wagyu instead of just chasing the highest marbling possible.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, without question, unequivocally, yes.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, for me, and again, I'm I'm just gonna use, I mean, my preferences as one person.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna say I define the market because I don't.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: But for me personally, there is a threshold on how much marbling I want in a steak, even though it is nutritious, even though it is delicious, even though it can't be a wonderful beef eating experience in its own right, but it's a separate and distinct product.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Once a certain threshold is crossed, we're going a lot more towards like, okay, we're gonna eat this like the Japanese eat it, which is not a steak on the plate, right?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Little itty bitty slice, hot plate either side, and and it's it's it's a different great in its own right, but it's different, right?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we're looking at how Americans prefer to produce beef or consume beef, or at least how I prefer to consume beef, um, I I there is a threshold as far as we get to a point where we say, hey, the the the whole point is not just more marbling, more marbling, more marbling, more marbling.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Past a certain point, for me personally, I still want like if I wanted a cuba butter, I'd have ordered a cuba butter.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want a steak on the plate, right?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so while while I don't want to take anything away from the folks that are gonna pursue a max marbling scenario and I wish them all the best in pursuing that target market, I do feel like for me and for my clientele, um, that there is a threshold to say, hey, we want maximum beef eating experience or beef beef eating quality and not just max marbling.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like max marbling and max beef eating experience, I wouldn't say are necessarily 100% the same thing.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, I agree.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: I agree, man.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, this is a fun thing.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of like to get into this.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's so many misconceptions out there about Wagyu, and you know, it's it's it's too expensive, it's it's overly rich, it's only from Japan, it cannot be raised in the United States, right?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: All this stuff, but what about Akaushi?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are there like, do you hear any like crazy misconceptions all the time about just like specifically Akaushi?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I would say, and this is one of those, you know, we talked about kind of some of that infighting you'll see between red wagyu and black wagyu, which I'm completely on the same page you are.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the last thing we need to be doing is tearing each other to shreds inside of the Wagyu beef community that's already this tiny, itty bitty little corner of the universe.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, we don't need to be throwing each other under the bus, right?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: There is a place for both of these breeds.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say one of the misconceptions uh would would be that, like, hey, this this is a lesser beef, right?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we talked about the black wagyu, like, yeah, if the goal is just straight max marbling, that that is probably the fit, right?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is to go with that black wagyu approach.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: But to come around to our conversation we just had, max marbling and max beef eating quality experience, or maximizing the enjoyment of that beef eating experience, not necessarily one and the same.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say the misconception would be saying, hey, if I go with Akuchi or I go with red wagyu, that I am producing a lesser quality beef.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or that this is all we went with the next best thing, or we went with it because it was cheaper to produce or easier to produce.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't as good.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not true.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's different, right?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: That they are different things, right?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like saying, like, I mean, you you've got a hammer and you've got a screwdriver, right?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: One puts in nails and one puts in screws.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if somebody sits there and says, well, a hammer can't be any good, it doesn't put a screw on the wall.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or vice versa.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not true, right?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: That they're different tools, they do different things well, and it just depends on what your target is and what you're trying to do.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: And and for me personally, you know, you're you're not giving up bee feeding experience by going with red wagy rock-ushi rather than Japanese black, right?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Two different breeds, two different tools, both have value, both have their place.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and for me personally, I really like being in that full blood or purebred uh red wagy rock-ushi space where they are a remarkably consistent product from a genetic standpoint, right?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: We don't deal with once you start into crossbreds or F1s, you're invariably gonna have some inconsistencies.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's benefits to combining breeds, there's reasons to combine breeds, there's there's value there too, but you are gonna have some inconsistencies because that that calf can trend towards what its mother is and towards what father is.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And if they're completely different animals, you're gonna get some inconsistencies in the finished product.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I really like if you get that that red wagyu in a purebred or full blood application, I say it's gonna be remarkably consistent.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's a wonderful beef eating experience.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: These are great cattle to be around.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we're okay with the fact maybe it's not max marbling, yeah, but you are not going you're not getting a lesser quality beef because you went with Akushi instead of with black wagyu.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm glad you made that clear because I do think that, yeah, sometimes I I hear that too, that it's like it's like the little brother, and you're like, actually.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, I don't always enjoy this a completely marbled, you know, uh Japanese black.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm like, okay, like it tastes good, but I can only have a little bit, you know, and I I like I want to find that perfect, that perfect mix.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: And also whatever mood I'm in.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like we got some little New York strips um from someone, um, who was it?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was Prime Prime Valley Wagyu in Indiana.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they get they was these little little strips, and they were full blood black and they were super marbled, and they were delicious and beefy.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I felt like it was like the perfect little size, and I was like, this is amazing, like this is perfect.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but like if you gave me a ribeye that looked like that, I'd be like, I gotta split it three ways.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I can't use that, you know.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: But but you know, there's just yeah, there's so many different, there's so many different ways to enjoy Wagyu.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like you said, it's not about just the Max Marblin all the time, it's about the eating experience and the tenderness.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when you eat that piece of Wagyu, whether it's Japanese black or red, you get that beautiful tenderness.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get that butteriness because they're both gonna be marbled.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in and then they're gonna taste a little bit different because of the terroir and the beefiness and the genetics.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: But like you want to, yeah, you gotta find that perfect spot.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm looking for that great balance.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm really looking for when I'm when I'm when I'm eating Wagyu.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes if I'm looking at some full blood, I might want to have a leaner cut because I'm in the mood, I might want a terrace major full blood.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm gonna go with uh, you know, uh F1 cross New York strip or purebred New York strip.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that's perfect for me.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, like I keep saying, I kind of want to try, I don't think I've tried a black and red mixed, you know, 50-50 or full blood wagyu.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: I that's to me sounds like something that might be perfect for me, but have you?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you've got to be.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so looking at the red blacks cross, so they they do complement each other extremely well, right?
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we we talked about crossbreeding or mentioned it just briefly, bringing the strengths of some different breeds together.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the beauty of that red black wagyu cross, they are both full blood wagyu or 100% wagyu, right?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's all Japanese origin.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so both have got all those similarities we just talked about, but then there are some differences, right?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: And they're complementary differences.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: So when you cross the two, it's a crossbred, so you do get the benefit of hybrid vigor or heterosis.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a two plus two equals five situation, right?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Where the calf will outperform the average of its parents.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you if you look at that crossbreeding situation.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: But because the parents are similar, we're gonna get a consistent bee feeding experience where we're gonna capitalize on breed complementarity between those two different breeds and say, hey, we're gonna bring together some of the best of both, and it makes an awesome bee feeding experience.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you know, I mean, even talking about, you like you mentioned, purebreds there and things like that, an interesting finding, you know, as I've chatted with other breeders and what other folks have run into, you know, on the on the genetics and in the world where I operate relative to the finished product, I think sometimes it would be human nature again when we talk about saying, like, well, there's this spectrum, right?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe, you know, the max marbling on one end.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: And theoretically, as we get away from a 100% Japanese full blood and go down to a purebred, which would be 1516ths or better, so above 93.75% Akiushi or Black Wagyu, we would assume, like, well, it's not 100%, so maybe we're giving up, you know what I mean, six or seven percent of quality.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a little bit lesser, right?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean, or it's not quite as good as a full blood.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the interesting thing, and I've observed this in my operation, it's been observed at Bar or Wagyu, which would be, you know, one of your largest and longest tenured black wagyu operations, it's been observed in Australia as they've gathered data on purebreds, right?
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: So cattle that are six percent, you know, 6.75%, another breed.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Quite often the purebreds are outperforming the full bloods, right?
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it is possible to say, hey, we're going above and beyond the performance of the 100% full bloods, even in things like chasing max marbling, or even in things like chasing max growth curve, or even in things like chasing, you know, carcass weight or things like that, to get as much, much, as many pounds of beef off that carcass as possible.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: So just an interesting thing that I guess, you know, it flies in the face a little bit of maybe the the conventional, or I don't even know if I want to say conventional wisdom, but maybe just the human nature to say, like, well, 100% Japanese should be the best, right?
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and the 50% Japanese, the F1, the half-blood calf, should be kind of the bottom end, right?
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and this purebred at 93.75% in between the two points should be kind of like almost as good, but in some cases is going as good or better, right?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and is and is surpassing the 100% Japanese black or Japanese wagyu performance in both black and red wagyu.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, just an interesting observation there that I share just to say, hey, um, it's okay to maybe challenge convention and to realize that just because it's not 100% doesn't mean it's not the best, or just because it's red wagyu versus black wagyu doesn't mean it's not the best.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I there's uh the the more we learn about genetics, the more I guess we realize we don't know.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's funny because I talked to Desi of the Triple Crown uh Steak Challenge, and she said some of the F1s perform better than some of the full bloods.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, because it's just so it's really about like genetics, like you said.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they there is that spectrum, you know, a lower end full blood and a higher end F1, they could they could cross, you know.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and one thing I would throw in here, Evan, you know, when we talk about kind of what what that finished product is gonna be, and this is one of the things I enjoy in the work I do.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically with purebred andor full blood, Ocuchi or Red Wagyu, you can take the same animal genetically, even if they are identical, right?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the exact same animal.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: So take flush mates, right?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: So sit full siblings, full, full siblings.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: We can take those animals and run them through a different feed protocol depending on what it is we do or don't want to do for a bee feeding experience, right?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, I mean, we can finish them with no corn at all, right?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: So just a straight alfalfa finish that is gonna take longer, right?
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: That that animal will be older at harvest.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is not going to be the max marbling approach.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: It just isn't, right?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um that there'd be pros and cons or different genetics that do different things in that finishing setting, but it it is not the max marbling approach.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Still a wonderful eating beef eating experience.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be more like an upper two-thirds choice or low prime uh kind of a finish, is what you're looking for there as far as the volume of marbling.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and different flavor, right?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it is it is definitively distinct and will very much reflect what kind of forage it's finished on, right?
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: But the same animal genetically, and it wouldn't matter whether it's a black wagyu or a red wagyu or a full blood or an F1 or purebred, whatever it may be.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: But if you finish it on uh no corn, you're gonna eat one thing.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: You finish it on a hundred days of corn, right?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: You might be looking at more like a low prime kind of a finish there.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: We bump that up to like a 300 days, you know, finish type approach, which would be what you most commonly see in Ocuchia and Red Wagyu to kind of be your standard.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be about 300 days on corn there at the end.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be beyond prime plus.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a beautiful steak.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or if you want to go for the full on, we're kind of chasing like a Japanese style finish, like max marbling approach.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's a 500 day on corn finish.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: So again, just to take even the same genetics, even identical genetics, but we can feed them different depending on what it is you want to do.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as far as I mean, each of those is gonna have a different cost to it.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Each of those is gonna produce a different stake.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's one of the things I like, I guess, to be able to offer my clients.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: I tell them, look, even if you buy, you know, anyone, so we sell full blood Awk Usi steers, for example, in our options.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you tell me what do you want for a bee feeding experience?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: You finish it appropriately, you can take the same animal and produce four very different stakes with with just those four differences in in a feeding period or in a finished protocol.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: So there's just so much nuance, you know, to it.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's as much art as science.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's cool, but it it's but it's funny kind of going back to the two percent versus the 98% consumer, nobody really realizes that.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not with the, you know, with the animals and in the industry, you really don't realize that.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: You just kind of think of they're being forced-fed corn on a dirt field, and because I saw, you know, food ink once, and I'm like, oh, cows are very, you know.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that, you know, that's really I mean, that's really why we started this podcast, because we're like, wow, we're talking to these ranchers and like things are a lot different than what we really thought, you know, like and and it's really nice to like to to talk about it and to meet people like you who are who are so passionate about it and can explain the process and the nuance to people so they can go, wow, um, you know, maybe maybe I should try that.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: I won't maybe it kind of takes the fear away, or like, and like knowing that you are producing this and that and that you care about all these little things that go into feeding and raising, um, you know, really takes a fear to the general public.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: And like I keep saying, that's really what we're trying to push out there and go, hey guys, like it's okay.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can try it, but try it from these good people who are registered, know exactly what they're doing.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, to to the general public's point, there's a lot of bad cattle raising out there and a lot of bad waguers too.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: So absolutely, absolutely.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's that's been an interesting.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: I just recorded a podcast episode, I guess two episodes back with my butcher, you know, and and so he actually feeds um full blood okayushi.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: So so animals that they're they're genetically are genetics, and then they go just a couple miles down the road, they're fed by him and harvested by him.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason he got into these full blood okayushi was he had run into so many half-blood wagyu um that had been so disappointing as far as as what that that bee feeding experience was.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: He had been so disappointed.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: And now that this is not to say, oh, you know, wagyu's the problem, right?
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, the the thing we're looking at in this scenario was he had these people that totally unknown genetics, right, as far as what what the Wagyu genetic component was, and then that that frankly had zero experience in in feeding the cattle, right?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we had no idea what kind of a finish protocol those cattle were on, had no idea to tell, hey, if this animal's ready for harvest or not, they just kind of brought it in when they had a date scheduled with the butcher.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so he had seen so many subpar, and that's the hard part, is if somebody has in their head, hey, Wagyu equals A5, like it is the same thing in my head, right?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: That is what it is.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then they go and they get a Wagyu Holstein F1 that sat on sticks in somebody's backyard through a drought and then got harvested in the fall without ever putting on any fat at all, whether that's via, you know, a quality grass finish or any of those corn finishes, and they went in thin.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is not only is it not gonna be this fantastic beef eating experience they had in their head, it's gonna be below what just conventional or traditional beef would be as far as the quality of the eating experience.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's not, no one of these pieces by itself is gonna get you there, right?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: If all you have is genetics, it can still be a subpar eating experience.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: If all you had is a great finish period, but it's you don't have the genetics in play, it's still not gonna be what it could have been.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: So all these things have to come together, and and and it is, it's very challenging for a consumer to come in saying, hey, Wagyu is just one thing, it is just one word in my head, but that is so difficult.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: If they have one bad beef eating experience like that from one I mean, even if it's not necessarily anyone with malicious intent, like I hate to call them a bad actor, but somebody said, Hey, take this, this thing's half Wagyu, and they went and harvested it, not knowing what they're doing.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: One poor beef eating experience, you can say, Oh, you know, Wagyu's a scam, or it's not any good, or you know, it's it's not what it could have been.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean, there's it that is challenging for the consumer to navigate.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad that there's folks like the meat dudes doing their best to help people navigate that.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, man.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the expectation is already so high when you hear the term Wagyu, right?
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, that's why, you know, we've always said from the beginning, like, know where your beef comes from.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's like if you know that that you can that that this that this wagyu is registered by American Wagyu Association or Akuti Association or the Australian Association, but there's verified genetics, and you understand that that everything is tracked and traceable all the way back to the original animals that came here.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: That is so important because, like you said, somebody might just have a wagyu, they don't know where it came from, they don't know what's been in it.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like conventional beef, you know, like well, right?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is product of the US, but it was raised in Brazil and shipped to Mexico, and then it was shipped to Hawaii, but now it's back up to Canada, and you have no idea where it's been or who's put anything into it, you know, like and so knowing where your beef comes from, knowing that like a lot of their there's so many great wagyu ranchers out there that go birth to harvest um and know exactly what goes into to their beef.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of great ranchers out there, not just wagyu ranchers, a lot of great small ranchers out there.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you know where your beef comes from, you will be able to hopefully dodge some of that shoddy, some of that shoddy wagyu out there, man.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we're doing the map.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, honestly, that is like the one of the biggest reasons.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: I went on Facebook and I was looking for Wagyu, and I click on it, and that some guy, you know, some ranch, and I click on it, I don't even know where the ranch is.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even tell me where the ranch is.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, so are you just somebody that maybe just bought some and then just you know is just shipping it out, have no idea what what's in it, how it was fed, how it was raised, was it that you know, was it under stress the whole time?
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: No idea, but you're just shipping it out there and calling it wild, and it's not registered.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's no, you know, like if I go to someone's page and I can't tell where the ranch is, it's that's a pretty good you know indication that maybe it's not the best thing, you know.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, I mean you bring up a great point there, Evan, that it is it's such a challenge for the consumer to even tell like it what what's gonna be good beef and and what's not gonna be good beef.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like that is such a challenge to navigate and and to just try to even figure out what what of this is good and what's not.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, with any challenge, that there's also an opportunity, you know, and that's one of the things I look at for people getting into raising Wagyu, whether that's red or black, but people getting into raising Wagyu, I think one of the opportunities that exists is that these scaled operations, now I don't want to say a scaled operation by default is bad, right?
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Scaled operations do a wonderful job of producing a cost-effective product for the American consumer, right?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and and and I and I can appreciate that, right?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm I'm an economics major, right?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: So like I I I appreciate their ability to produce food.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and the United States food supply is the safest in the world, right?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: So while I absolutely appreciate they can produce a safe product, they can appreciate uh produce a safe and cost-effective product, so very much appreciate what they do and what they do well.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: But what they cannot do pretty well by default by operating at that degree of scale, what cannot be done at that point in time is to produce um something that is truly fully traceable end to end.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can guarantee you if you go in, I mean, I I spent time this last summer in a facility that that produced that uh harvests 6,000 head a day, right?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: Incredibly efficient, right?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: And my hat's off to them.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: They do a wonderful job at keeping the American public fed, right?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there is a need for scaled, low-cost operators.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's a need for it, right?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the the ultra premium end of the market is not for everyone.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even going to be for me every day of the week, as far as just, I mean, the most expensive product isn't always gonna be the one that we can do, right?
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes but the thing that I do think it leaves wide open as an opportunity, right, for a small-scale producer.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I talk about what I'm doing with my butcher here, I mean, we know literally, I mean, that animal was conceived here, was calved here, was raised here, you know, it's been DNA verified.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: We know exactly which animal went to, exactly which feedlot two miles down the road.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: We know exactly who fed it, we know exactly what they fed it, we know for exactly how long, and we know exactly, I mean, when that animal's harvested, we I mean, down to the person buying the beef, I mean, we'll literally know what animal, what individual it came from, not just what program or what general idea.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like we know, like literally, it was born this day, bred this way, fed that way, harvested at this point.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know exactly what it is.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's gonna be more challenging.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: That is gonna be more expensive.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like specialty by definition will never be the cheapest, right?
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: But there there are the two sides of American agriculture today.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: Both are needed, um, and there's opportunity in both, right?
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: But there's basically specialty and there's scale.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's the two different pieces, um, and both are gonna continue to operate.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if unless you're gonna come in with an enormous amount of money and an incredibly efficient process, the opportunity to come in at scale is fairly limited, right?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: The guys that do that are incredibly efficient.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like they are so good at what they do.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Let them do what they do well, which is produce the most cost-effective product, right?
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: But what the opportunity they leave wide open is to produce the absolute best product.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: Not to say the other one's horrendous.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not here to attack my fellow agriculturalists, right?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the Infighting and Wagyu we're talking about.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I am not here to say they're bad people because they are not, right?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: They're producing a cheap product.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: But what they cannot do is produce one with the degree of traceability, with the degree of quality that we can do here.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: They cannot take, you know, these full bloods, these purebreds, these documented DNA-verified animals where we know literally everything about them.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: They cannot provide that product at the price point they do, at the volume they do, at the scale they do.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if that is important to you and you have enough money to be able to do that, then a lot of people will do that.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're looking for that.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's why people buy that nice tequila out of Jalisco, you know.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they might not drink champagne every night.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're drinking some nice sparkling wine from California, which is also really good.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: But but you know, it's you know, every once in a while you might want to you might want to, you know, grab the nice stuff.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, there's totally a market for that.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and even on that, you know, uh yes, Wagyu is going to be more expensive, but it's not when I say that, I always say it with like an asterisk where it's like, well, it's not gonna be out there insanely expensive because of the types of of cuts in the cow, right?
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go like, we'll go to a Whole Foods here and we're in Seattle, right?
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll look at like they have New York strip, tenderloin, ribeye, maybe a couple of other things, and like that's mostly what they have.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to say, yeah, a prime ribeye versus a prime, you know, uh, or versus a a Wagyu ribeye, yes, the Wagyu ribeye is going to be more expensive because of all those things we just talked about.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: But you can also look for if you go to a specialty butcher shop, maybe a a pr uh a Wagyu Denver, a Wagyu Bavette, a Wagyu skirt steak, which is going to be a way better eating experience and probably the same, if not less, money than than a prime ribeye is going to be out there.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's there's just so many different types of things that we can do.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if yeah, if you aren't in you can't spend$70 on a full blood Wagyu ribeye, maybe you can spend$25 on a Wagyu's full blood, you know, Denver's Abu Ton.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: And right.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and and this has been one of the things that I have noticed, even just my my family eats.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're we're spoiled rotten, right?
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're sitting here at Savs because we do happen to produce this stuff.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is all that's in the freezer, right?
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's straight.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's full blood occasion wagyu.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: But the to your point, I mean, I have just been so impressed.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I have not gone into a cut that I've been disappointed by.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like that, there's not been anywhere that I'm like, oh, this one's tough or this one's not flavorful, or oh, well, that's too bad, or like, ah, we should have ground that one.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is so good.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's an opportunity, even within things like if someone's gonna take on for the first time raising their raising cattle, right?
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you go and buy a couple of Aushi or Black Wagyu steers, right?
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: And feed those out, you can go into that and say, hey, look, now we can get pretty well the whole anything that can be cut.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're still gonna get plenty of ground beef, like people have got to understand that whole process and what that is.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: But um, when I cut ours, uh, I don't necessarily cut a ton of roast.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now I love a good roast, but it's just for simplicity's sake, right?
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I can cook a steak quicker, we can serve a serve a steak quicker, and it's just easier, and it's not as big, right, as what a roast is.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we've taken a lot of traditionally roast cuts, right?
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we're taking the round and we're doing round steaks, right?
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're taking the the truck and we're doing Chuck Steaks, and and they are awesome.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I'll sit down and eat around a round steak off of an Akieshi Wagyu blows away even the some of the top-end steaks off of your more traditional breeds, right?
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or your more traditional beef.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and that has been such an awesome and enjoyable thing.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I share with people when they come here all these different cuts.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a matter of like, well, you know, here's a couple of these primo names, you know, the big names, right?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: The only steak cuts that most people know are gonna be like a ribeye or a New York.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and there's just not that many pounds of ribeye in New York off of a full-fledged animal, right?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: But when the round steak is this fantastic, or the skirt steak is this awesome, or the chuck steak is that great, I mean, all of it is so good.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or I mean the burger just completely ruins you.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, uh the poor kid that spends his hard-earned money trying to buy my daughter a steak someday.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter's six.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I see the things to impress her.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: She she anyway, the baseline has been set high because it is all so good.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know I say the same thing.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh man, some someone's gonna grill you a steak one day and you're gonna be like, what is this crap?
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I'm gonna eat my whole life, you know.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes, yeah.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: My my daughter is is spoiled, no doubt.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love it, dude.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: And oh man, you know, talking about some of those underrated cuts, um, we, you know, we're getting in a lot of wagyu.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: People are shipping us wagyu from all over the US now, and we're getting a lot of like top rounds because we want to, you know, utilize it differently.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard a few people say they like to slice the top round, souvete it, and then kind of um reverse sear it, or we're brazing it, we're smoking it, you know, uh the bottom round as well.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're getting a lot of chuck steaks too, because we're you're grilling those up.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is unbelievable.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you got a chuck steak from a prime, you know, conventional beef, you know, it might be okay, but the this is like a little ribeye.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is a mini ribeye.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's tender, it still has a little chew because it is from the chuck, but it's not anything insane.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a good chew.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we're looking for like that ultimate, like what's the next thing?
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some people like to slice the London broil into steaks and grill them.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, have you found anything else in the back end, the tail end of the cow that you've really been impressed with?
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's been really, really fun for me, Evan, because like I mentioned, I'm kind of at the point, truthfully, I'm educating myself on the beef industry.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I've spent a lifetime in the cattle industry, and it's easy to think they're one and the same, but I mean, truthfully, they require the same animal, right?
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: But that that's honestly about where the similarities end, right?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I know the live animal, front, back, and sideways is what I do all day, every day.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: But then the beef, the finished product, it's a fun and enjoyable new learning experience for me as a cattle producer.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and one of the things I've loved is we've gone through and harvested, like I mentioned, we've tested some of these different genetics, obviously, but then we've also tested some different finish protocols on the beef.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then to your point, testing some of these different cuts and then some of these different cook methods, um, you know, all of what I do is painfully simple, right?
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I am not going to be someone that I'm like, boy, I have got this resume, like I can smoke it, I can grill it, I can, you know, I can do all these different like I it has got to be painfully simple, right?
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've got 400 cows and four kids and no time for really a whole lot of anything else, right?
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure pretty well everybody is is fighting those same constraints on their schedule.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: So simplicity for me is is king, even when it comes to things like these cuts, right?
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and we talked about earlier how most things are either you know healthy or delicious, and and Akuchi is both.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I love with the way I'm currently cut uh cutting and cooking, we're cutting pretty much everything into one inch steaks.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean straight through all of it.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like anything that can make a steak is making a steak.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's making one so wildly simple.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not being overthought, it's not being overdone.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not coming in wildly educated.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is just straight, it's all one inch steaks or it's a burger.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: With the exception of the brisket.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: That is the only exception, right?
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like everything else, it is one inch steaks or it is burger, and even something as painfully simple as that, right?
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's all getting frozen because obviously we're storing it, you know, over over time.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then it's going straight into the sous vide.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: And depending on the cut, I mean, we have cooked anything literally anywhere from two hours, clear out to 72 hours.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you go on the internet, it is all over the place on what people think they ought to do for sous vide.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: But the beauty of a situation like that, right?
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: If we say, hey, one inch steak straight through, right?
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we say all of the cooking, it is sous V straight through, from two hours clear on out to 72, depending on how many tougher cuts we leave in longer, yeah, right?
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and and I mean tougher, right?
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean something that has more to relatively speaking, you know, we're gonna leave in longer, but I mean it is just fantastic.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so coming down to that point of most of the time it's either convenient or it's healthy and delicious, right?
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, healthy and delicious is like this labor of love, this job, right?
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but to get something that convenient that it is like I don't have to know how to do the cut sheet.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: I just said one inch steaks.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to know how to cook.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: I literally just grab it out of the freezer, and it is the degree of convenience of a microwave meal.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: But this is full-on world-class eating experience.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that is just awesome to me, you know.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, like, we'll throw in, we'll take all those one-inch steaks, I'll throw in a series of them, and and we'll throw in a bunch of different cuts, ranging all the way from, you know, a tenderloin New Yorker ribeye all the way up to, you know, we'll have some Chuck steaks in, we'll have some round steaks in, things like that.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the only difference between any of them is I pull and eat the more tender stuff like a tenderloin New Yorker ribeye first, and I'll let the other sit in the sous V longer.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll we'll sit there and we can eat off of it two or three meals, whatever else, because you're sitting there anaerobic in the Sous V environment, right?
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're sitting there at a high enough temperature, you're not gonna have bacterial growth, and it just gets more tender the longer it sits.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we just ate some chuck steak yesterday coming out of that sous V.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, for the fact that I don't know how to, I'm no wizard with a cut sheet, and I'm no wizard with with my cooking experience.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh my word, it was fantastic.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a chug steak, like it's supposed to be a roast.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is supposed to be the low-end beef eating.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is cheap or I'm on a budget.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it was stellar.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: I would have zero qualms serving that to anyone.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it was I mean, unless I really didn't like them, but like it was real like it was fantastic, fantastic beef.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: And anyway, I I've just been tickled with the the beef eating experience on the red wagon.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's so cool, man.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love you just taking everything and just one at stakes, and let's go.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wildly basic.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: Wildly simple.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's kind of you know, you're taking almost what the Japanese do, you know, they cut everything, you know, for this thin strip on every everything, you know, and the you know, that they not as much Shabu Shab.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: I heard they don't do as much Shabu Shabu as we think, but uh, but it's still that same kind of style of just you know, thin on the rock, cutting, you know.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and 'cause I always ask, I'm like, what what happens with like A five?
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're not like doing ground beef for A five or like an A five cow or anything like that, you know, but everything just gets thinly stripped.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kinda like what you do for it's more of the American way.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to make the mistakes for the consumer.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and then you just don't have to know.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I look at it and I'm like, I'm a I'm a cattle producer and I don't know.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like to say, like, oh, I really have a nuanced view of of a cut sheet, right?
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or of prep methods.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't expect somebody that's raising a steer for the first time to just have all of this just perfectly dialed.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if I can say, hey, even if you don't have this wildly complex anything, even if all you do is cut straight one-inch steaks and they all hit the sous V, I am positive so long as that animal is bred and fed right, you will like the eating experience that gets on.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: Keeping it simple, man.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like meal prepping, you know?
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you meal prepping?
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: It is as easy.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: It could not be any easier and it could not be any better to eat.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think it's just an incredibly unique option that way.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what would be, you know, for somebody buying Akuchi the first time, what would be the one steak or one cut that you would tell them to start with?
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what what my kids will always request is a tenderloin, but the problem with a tenderloin is it's gonna ruin you.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, right out of the gate.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: So like the average tenderloin that the average person eats in the average place is wrapped in bacon, right?
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's incredibly tender but has little to no flavor, right?
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: So filet mignon is wrapped in bacon.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the incredible thing with a wagyu tenderloin, it is marble.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it is flavorful, and it is incredibly tender.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is literally anything is tough by comparison to a wagyu tenderloin.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were only ever gonna eat one in your entire life, um, eat a wagyu tenderloin, but you know, put the asterisk on, they're like, you will be ruined.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like nothing else will ever compare.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: I agree, I agree.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: So well, let's see.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: So one of my final questions, I kind of like to see that, you know, what we think about the the wag industry in the next maybe five to ten years.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, in the next five to ten years, you know, especially like more more of the consumers being like more educated about genetics and feeding and and programs, you know, and transparency, where do you see the the wagon industry really heading?
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see it?
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because I just personally I I was in the cannabis industry when it first started, and like now I look at it and it's very funny to see how it is completely different from 10, 15 years ago, where people were like, oh, it makes you stupid, and now it's like, oh, well, I'm having a CBD pill with my you know vitamin D pill.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: So where do you kind of see this, you know, in a bed now 10 years?
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, yep, yep, yep.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_01: It absolutely will develop, it absolutely will.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: It already has developed and changed significantly over the course of the last 30 years since those females arrived, or or the last 50 since those first bulls came in.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and when I look at it, you know, I I mentioned previously, I guess, the the two different forms in ag of kind of specialty or scale.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, if somebody's seriously going to be engaged in agriculture, period, including the wagyu industry, like the production end where I operate, like the live cattle, it it is specialty or it is scale.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, frankly, scale, I mean, it's enormously capital intensive.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's already some pretty established players.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing a good job, right?
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you if you look at your large Wagyu programs, you look at Snake River Farms, you look at Heartbrand, they're doing a good job, right?
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like these are these are good cattle, good programs, good beef.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: They are consistent, right?
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like if somebody needs a consistent product, right?
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: They're not cheap, but they're consistent.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: They do a good job.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: That that scaled operation, I see those programs continuing to grow, right?
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I think they're doing good work.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think they'll continue to grow.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess the point I'm getting at is if if people are looking to get into Wagyu or get into Akuchi or engage in in the production end of this, right?
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: Raise a couple steers, harvest your own beef.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the opportunity is on that specialty end, right?
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it is to say, hey, we we are gonna breed these specific to this ranch.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: I guess this is how we breed them, right?
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is how at this ranch, this is how we feed them, right?
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's how we've decided we want to go about that finished period.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is how we cut them, this is how we cook them, this is all the pieces to make a unique beef eating experience.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what you will see is a further acceleration over the course of the next 10, 15 years.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: The big players are gonna keep getting bigger.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like that there's there's a demand for that, there's a need for that.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: They provide value and they're and they're gonna be rewarded for that, right?
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I do think that there is absolutely a place um for these specialty operations to provide something that a scaled operation can't, right?
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Don't look at it as a challenge that you got to go be them, right?
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: That they're 10, 20, 30 years ahead of you, right?
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like go ahead and focus on leaning into what it is you do well, right?
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing what that animal is exactly from end to end and making your own bee feeding experience, right?
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_01: People are going to want, I mean, we're already seeing this shift towards people wanting to know.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's been happening, gosh, for 10, 15 years.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: People want to know where their feed comes or their food comes from, right?
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: People want to know how it was raised.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: People want to know where it was raised.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: People want to know who raised it.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_01: People want to know what is it.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like they'd like to have an answer instead of it being like, well, this is a commodity food product that could have any one of.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can have a hamburger patty that's got 1,500 different DNA strands in it.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because there were 16, there's 6,000 animals killed in a day.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, of course there, I mean, I'm surprised there were only 1,500 present in this patty, right?
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it is like it's a they're two different production environments.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Both will continue to exist.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's value in both.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: One will be the least cost operator, and that is the the scaled outfit, right?
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: But there is and will continue to be a need and a demand for that specialty operation that can give more answers than what is logistically possible at scale.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that that's what I see continuing and accelerating going forward.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the people that can lean into that and say, hey, you know what?
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_01: We are gonna be radically transparent.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: We are more than willing to let people know exactly what this is.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_01: People are willing to pay for that.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think you'll continue to see success for some of these smaller um specialty operations producing things like high quality wagyu beef that is unique to them.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, I like that because one thing that worries me is it it's it's this great little industry right now.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is so small, right?
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like we pretty much know almost everybody in this industry.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um but how do we keep it quality as it grows?
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's like the big city, like as you scale, it's really hard.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are gonna be like the Budweisers are gonna come in, you know, and you're gonna be like, okay, now we got we got the old Budweiser wagyu, you know.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so how do we, you know, I I'm always trying to think of like knowing where your beef comes from is it's the first way to like combat that and supporting all of these smaller local ranches that do it the right way, but you say they have the transparency because there's gonna be a lot of people that come in that may not have the transparency, um, or you may not love what they do, or they can't tell you where the ranch is at, you know.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So looking for these things and understanding who your rancher is, um, that that's uh one of the biggest things that we are a huge proponent of.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how we started our restaurants here in Seattle.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, we know Farmer Paul out there at Pier Country Farms.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've met him, we've shook his hand, you know, and we know exactly what goes into those cattle, and he shows it, showed us what these are.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_00: We got to hold baby pigs, and you know, we got to do everything and like really like we know everything about that ranch.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not it's not gonna be the case for every single person out there, but the more transparency you have, the more you can like learn about who's providing your food, the safer it's gonna be and the more comfortable you're gonna be eating it.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully we can keep that home.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and I I would tell people don't be afraid to try raising your own.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna say that that's the right fit for everyone.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, like there are logistical constraints to to live cattle.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_01: There are places they can be, there are places they can't be.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So not everyone is is gonna have that opportunity.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_01: But that is another thing that I definitely see continuing to change in the next 10 to 15 years, especially as COVID hit and so many people went remote, right?
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Or those remote positions really accelerated, right?
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_01: So much work.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you and I are sitting in completely different physical locations, right?
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And having this conversation and recording it, we're gonna distribute it and all these things.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like the things that are available that are options remotely are greater than they have ever been.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what that has led to, there are more people living in a place where they could house a few cows than what there ever has been before, right?
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Historically, it's been just about everybody's in the city, and there are a few people that are out and about and maybe have access to the to the sheer geography to be able to house a few animals.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_01: But there are more people than ever before, and that trend will not slow.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: You'll see more and more people continue to move out to the country, or even, I mean, call it out to the suburbs, but more so out to the country.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, frankly, at this point, you can be in the middle of absolute nowhere and hook to Starlink and do a lot of jobs.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the point that I'm making there would be don't be afraid to raise your own, you know, and and and and uh and while that won't be the fit for everyone, that might seem, I guess, daunting.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but truthfully, it's it's really quite a rewarding thing to say, hey, we can take a couple of these live animals and and literally raise them end to end to where you know everything you could possibly know about them.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and that is, I mean, that's the space in which I operate.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is a lot of the people I sell to are just barely getting engaged in agriculture for the first time in any way, shape, or form, or just barely getting engaged in cattle for the first time in any way, shape, or form.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And don't be afraid to take that on and say, you know what, like is it gonna turn out exactly like whatever you tried somewhere else?
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not, but that's okay to go ahead and try it, try raising your own, try taking them straight through.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what a neat opportunity, you know, to get into to have that personal connection with your own food, right?
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you decide exactly every piece of what you want for how that how that animal goes from the live animal on your property to to the finished product on your plate.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a neat opportunity that I think more people than ever will be able to engage in, and more people than ever should engage in in the next 10 to 15 years.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, you made a good point because I don't think that that any a lot of people would not have even thought of that before COVID.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been like, there's no way I could ever do this.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And still some people may think that way.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there are a lot more, like you said, that would like, you know what, this could actually, I could maybe actually do this.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and so it became a little bit more of an option for people, kind of changed a lot of the mindset out there.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh yeah, that would be cool.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is the more people that are doing it, the more education that's out there, the the the the the less fear people are gonna have about it, and I think the more it's gonna just hit the the the market and and and have people just understand that it's okay to choose your wagyu and that it's a spectrum, and you don't gotta spend$200 a pound to get it anymore, you know.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And once we put that out there, yeah, I think that we're gonna slowly see that kind of just change, change, change.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And once we get the the good stuff, you know, uh, or once we get people to go back to the butcher shops, um, and seeing like, you know, uh understanding that these butchers know exactly where this meat comes from.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's like the first step for me.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we always kind of say.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, don't always go to the grocery store.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to some great butcher shops and then support these people because generally they're gonna know where the meat comes from, maybe a little bit more.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, man.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Seth, how uh how do they get a hold of you, man?
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_00: How you know what what's your can you explain a little bit of your podcast and then uh and how can people get in touch if they are interested in learning more about Akayushi or raising Akayushi?
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, you bet, absolutely.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and appreciate you having me here, Evan.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And would invite anybody that's listening to this podcast, um, if you're catching this on the Meet Dudes channel, to take a look at Got Any Cows is the name of our podcast.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is going to be on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is a full video podcast, and so you can see the live cattle, you can see all the people that we interview.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we usually toggle back and forth.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_01: We release an episode every two weeks, and we'll go back and forth between an episode where I'm out in the cattle, kind of walking you through what those animals are and even options on animals to purchase.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: We run a monthly auction for anyone that's interested in engaging and in purchasing cattle for the first time.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the folks I deal with are first-time buyers, and so looking to help people that are in that 98% of the U.S.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: population that hasn't had a chance to engage in in production agriculture.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And quite often, you know, these scaled outfits aren't going to slow down long enough to explain it.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the things I want to do on the Got Any Cows podcast is help people understand what it takes to get into these cattle, and then all those different pieces that impact being able to raise animals.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we toggle back and forth each episode between an episode that's in the cows and then an episode that we've got an industry expert on.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we've touched everything from how to feed these cattle to we've had a veterinarian on, I've had my banker on, we've talked marketing, we've talked forage production as far as the things to feed the cows.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've talked everything and anything that touches cows.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So would invite anybody that that wants to take a look at that.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Our website is gotanycows.com, or it's on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or you can watch the videos on YouTube.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_01: The videos are actually going to be on Apple Podcasts as well, and I think they'll start being on Spotify in short order.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So nice, man.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I I talked to, especially doing this map, I talked to a lot of Wagyu uh ranchers out there, and they a lot of people kind of started funneling me towards you.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I I know you are a great resource for this.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard from a ton of ranchers about you, and I was like, okay, I gotta talk to this guy then.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: We got I gotta get him on, you know.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, so absolutely, you know, you have a you have the meet you are meet dude, you know, you have the meat dude's blessing because I've heard from so many ranchers about yeah, about what you do and and how how you've helped them.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think that's cool.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean this has been such a great conversation, man, and and I love that you know, talking about Wagyu, like we we want to promote Wagyu very positively.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that you being in the you know the Akaushi industry, you're still talking positively about Japanese black, and you're talking about how it's it's you know, there is something for everyone out there, and that is such a huge mission of ours, just to let people know there is a there's wagyu out there for you.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and you can try it.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can get so many different things, you can try different price points, and and you just gotta kind of find what you're looking for.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a something on a month.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_00: We always talk to a grass-fed rancher, and he said, you know, this isn't a a steak that people are gonna eat every single night, but maybe it's a great one on your Monday or a Tuesday steak, you know, it's a different day of the week.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I just feel like that's such a great uh, you know, that's such a great motto for for people in the industry and for people to to hear that, you know, there is different types out there.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So go out there and experience a lot of the different types of wagyu and and go out there and try uh the the uh the different types of cuts so you're not just buying the ribey's out there.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So many things you can do.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And Seth, we learned uh so much about about Akayushi, man.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you again.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_00: This has been so awesome.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_00: I uh feel like I just got my my degree in Akaushi here, man.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I understand it a little bit more, and now I can talk to other people about it a little bit better now.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I really appreciate that, man.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, appreciate you taking the time to record, Evan.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's awesome to have somebody on that has the beef experience that you do and that's coming from that opposite end of the spectrum.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or, like I mentioned, so much left for me to learn, you know, uh, about the cuts and about how to cook them and about all these things that impact the eating experience and and definitely feel like we're aligned in trying to bring as much information as we can about whether it's the live animal or the steak on the plate out to that 98% of people that that may not understand, you know, or may not have their heads wrapped around it.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm learning more every day.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I hope I really feel like there'll be some things of value in this conversation for people listening, whether they're coming at it from the meat end or the live catalyst.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for your time.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, we're done a bunch of things, and I am really excited to to get this out.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and yeah, I think that people are gonna totally get a different perspective on uh on Akaushi and like you said, just on the meat eating experienced.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and so yeah, I really appreciate you, man.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is this has been awesome, man.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh, you know, like we said, we're I think we're both gonna put this out, and so hopefully a lot of people get some great value out of it, and and we can just keep pushing the the positive Wagyu mission out there and uh and get this out to more people because once you say, like like you said, once you have it, man, you'll you'll be ruined.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's game over.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I say don't don't try it once because there's no going back.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Seth, thank you so much, man.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it again.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh hopefully we can uh our paths will cross here.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're we're pretty close.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're in Idaho, I'm in Washington, so maybe I'll we'll have to get out there uh you know one of these days and check out the ranch.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love to have you anytime.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's an Aki issue stake in the SUV for you.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_00: All right, man.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk to you then.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds good.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Got Any Cows Podcast.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And visit us anytime at godanycows.com.