WITH aims to be the meat centre of the world, the Wagyu Master Meat Centre certainly has the processing facility to support that endeavour.
The state of the art facility, situated in Himeji city in Hyogo, Japan, produces the well known Kobe Wagyu beef, that is exported around the world.
The facility is also the home of the widely publicised Kobe beef auctions, which attracts bidders from across the globe.
Buyers can sit in the bidding room and view each carcase as it comes up for sale or they can log onto the auction online.
Beef auctions are held twice a week on a Wednesday and a Saturday with about 80 carcases going under the hammer.
Such is the demand for the premium grade beef that prices average Y$2 million ($A27,249) per carcase at each sale.
Cattle processed at the facility are slaughtered at about 31 months old at an average liveweight of 700kg and they dress out at 450kg on average.
Carcases are graded under a system that considers yield, marbling, meat colour, texture and colour and quality of fat.
With a capacity to process up to 200 cattle a day, the abattoir has a throughput of 24,000 head using the on-rail method on the slaughter chain.
Wagyu Master Meat Centre has 13 slaughter houses that are accredited by the Japanese government to export beef to the US and 10 that are accredited to export beef to Australia.
The Wagyu Master Meat Centre in Himeji is the only slaughterhouse in the group that has approval to export Kobe beef, due to the stringent regulations that surround the production and export of the specialty beef.
Kobe beef is Wagyu beef from the Tajima strain of Japanese Black cattle raised in the Hyogo Prefecture according to rules set out by the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association.
Those suppliers lucky enough to be accredited to sell Kobe beef by the Wagyu Master Meat Centre receive a certificate to display in their shop.
There is only one shop in Australia - Osawa Enterprises, located in Sydney - that is certified to sell Kobe beef.
Upon arrival at the slaughterhouse the cattle are unloaded to a mooring station, which can hold 125 cows at a time.
Each space in this station is fully equipped with water stations and is installed with mist machines to control the temperature during summer.
The dissection line consists of two lines that automatically move after a period of time, so there is no need to touch the Wagyu beef carcase and each line is set five metres above the floor, considering exportation to the US.
The boning room is equipped with two lines that are capable of processing 60 Wagyu beef carcases per day.
- Farm Weekly's Travis King visited Japan and South Korea as a guest of the CBH Group.
