Earlier this year I wrote at length about a very pricey food scam, the widespread sale of fake Kobe beef in this country. In my multi-part series I explained that for the past few years the USDA has completely banned the import of all Japanese beef, Kobe or otherwise, fresh or frozen, bone or boneless. If a restaurant was advertising the sale of Kobe beef steaks, burgers, sliders, or any form of Kobe beef whatsoever, it was what I deemed “Faux-be beef” – certainly not the real thing from Japan no matter how much you paid for it.
Or as London’s Daily Mail eloquently put it, “While restaurants across America have claimed to sell Kobe beef on their upscale menus for years, charging customers hundreds of dollars for the delicacy, these steaks have previously been fakes.”
This situation changed drastically last month when the USDA relaxed its rules and allowed the limited importation of some Japanese beef. The ban came about in the first place because of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease among Japanese cattle, but after ample investigation, the USDA has deemed the current risk for Japan to be low, and since late August, whole cuts of boneless beef can be imported. For steak lovers this is a pretty big shift since high-quality Japanese beef is rarely served on the bone anyway: you don’t traditionally get a Kobe T-bone or porterhouse or bone-in rib eye, so the real Kobe beef people crave will be allowed.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Forbes
