Japanese Kobe Beef
神戸ビーフTajima cattle born, raised and slaughtered in Hyogo, certified by the association that owns the name. The most counterfeited beef in the world, and the one with the strictest paper trail.
Specification, not suggestion.
Everything on this page is either a published figure with a source or a gap we have written down. Nothing is a guess dressed as a fact.
Readiness: 4 of 6. We answer six questions about every line before we sell it: supply, cost, price, regulatory, buyers, margin. This one has 4 of them answered.
| Detail | What we state |
|---|---|
| Breed | Tajima-gyu, born, raised and slaughtered in Hyogo Prefecture |
| Grade | Beef marbling standard 6 or above, at yield grade A or B and quality grade 4 or above |
| Carcass | 499.9 kg or less, and at least 270 kg for a heifer or 300 kg for a steer. Heifer or steer only, never a bull |
| Age at slaughter | 28 to 60 months, and slaughtered at one of six meat centres in Hyogo |
| Certification | Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association, and Japan GI registration number 3 |
| Traceability | A ten digit carcass number on every cut, checkable against the association's register |
| Customs heading | 0201 or 0202, to be confirmed by your broker |
What we know, and what we do not.
Most suppliers answer the first three and let you discover the other three after you have ordered. All six are here, including the ones where the honest answer is that nobody has looked yet.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Supply | Between 3,000 and 5,500 head earn the certification in a year, out of every Tajima animal in Hyogo, and under a tenth of that leaves Japan. Supply is not the question on this line. Access is. |
| Cost | Not answered. No quote, and we would not get one by asking a farm, because the selling is not done at the farm. |
| Price | The top of the wagyu market and the only grade that is routinely sold out. Crowd Cow lists Kobe at BMS 12 and it was out of stock when the shelf was read on 13 October 2026, while every Miyazaki and Kagoshima cut beside it was available at 265 to 764 dollars a kilogram. |
| Regulatory | Three gates, not one. The FSIS listed plant that every Japanese beef shipment needs. The beef tariff quota, which Brazil fills in the first week of January, so 26.4 percent. And the one that actually decides it: the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association sells only to distributors it has approved, and the association's own export record names S FOODS Inc as the exporter on every shipment it lists. |
| Buyers | The same American buyers as our wagyu line, but only a fraction of them may legally call it Kobe. Fewer than fifty restaurants and distributors in the United States are certified, and the association names TAJIMA USA INC and TREX CORP INC among the importers it ships to. |
| Margin | Cannot be computed. Until there is a route through the association there is no buying price, and a margin on a product we cannot lawfully label would be a number about nothing. |
The things that turn a good price into a bad one.
The association, not the farm
This name is owned by a body that chooses its distributors. The route runs through approval and a membership fee, not through a producer relationship, and that is the opposite of how every other line here works.
The quota
Kobe is beef, so it meets the same tariff quota as our wagyu. Exhausted on 6 January 2026, which puts it at 26.4 percent.
The word itself
Kobe is the most counterfeited beef name in the world. Anything sold without a ten digit carcass number is not it, and we will not print the word on a quote we cannot evidence.
What we would need to quote this properly.
- Whether the association will approve a new distributor at all, which we are applying to find out
- The membership cost and what it obliges
- A buying price
- Which FSIS listed plant handles certified Kobe
Sources
- Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association, export record
- MAFF Geographical Indication register, entry 3
- US beef tariff rate quota reporting, January 2026
What leaves Japan this month.
Once a month: the prices that moved, the reason they moved, and what we can allocate before it is spoken for. Written for people who buy, by the people doing the buying.
Buyers and distributors only. We do not sell the list and you can leave in one click.