Japan Tests Whether Sake Waste Can Make Beef Taste Better

Japan is famous for its sake, and for its beef. Now, an initiative in central Japan's Toyama Prefecture launched in fiscal 2020 is bringing the two together, feeding sake lees, or sake kasu, to beef cattle to both reduce waste and make tastier steaks, Shunsuke Takara reported for Mainichi Shimbun.

Photo Insert: Sake and beef, two of Japan's most famous staples, will come together in a way never before imagined.

According to Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, households and businesses in the country wasted a total of about 6 million metric tons (MMT) of food in fiscal 2018.

The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals aim to halve food waste at the retail and consumption levels by 2030.

Sake lees are the residue left after sake is squeezed out of fermented rice. It has long been an essential ingredient in the Japanese diet, used to make pickled vegetables and fish, and "amazake" sweet fermented rice drinks.

However, demand for the lees has diminished as dietary habits have changed. Toyama Prefecture is famous for its rice production and has 20 sake breweries. Whenever sake is brewed, it leaves sake lees. Disposing of lees as industrial waste is costly and has been a headache for breweries.

Sake lees, which contain about 8% alcohol, do not spoil easily even when stored at room temperature, making them easy to handle.

With the cooperation of two brewing companies that are members of the Toyama Prefecture Sake Brewery Association, a pilot project using sake lees as feed for beef cattle has begun.

It is not only the breweries that benefit, as they can sell the sake lees and reduce the cost of disposal, but it turns out the beef quality also becomes better.

In fiscal 2020, 21 cattle at two farms in the prefecture were fed a kilogram of feed mixed with sake lees every day for three months prior to shipment.

The percentage of "marbling" in the meat increased, and 95% of the carcasses were given the highest grade, "A5." In fiscal 2019, before the experiment, only 64% of the carcasses were ranked A5 in the entire prefecture, so the effect was remarkable.

As the meat quality is directly related to the price, it is expected to increase livestock farmers' income.

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