We at Prime Valley Farms get this question many times: Do you have A5 Wagyu? Below is a short explanation of A5 Wagyu beef compared to our 100% Fullblood Wagyu beef we raise in Indiana, USA.

Prime Valley Farms does not sell A5 graded Wagyu.  To explain, A5 is a grading scale only used in Japan.  A5 Wagyu must be exported from Japan.  A5 is the highest possible quality rating awarded by the Japanese government.  “A” of “A5” means the yield grade, while “5” shows the quality grade. Very little of it gets exported every year and there are only a handful of retailers that carry it here in the US. Some high end restaurants will carry it and there are a few very high end butchers in some big cities that carry it from time to time. 

While there is not currently a grading system or certification scale established here in the USA that is sufficient to address the extremely high marbling and carcass quality of 100% Fullblood Japanese Black Wagyu, at Prime Valley Farms, we do set our own standard for our product. Our minimum standard for selling our beef to a restaurant or vendor such as yourself is 30% IMF (“Intra-Muscular Fat” known as “marbling”). This 30% IMF is based upon the photo analysis of the percentage of white specs (marbling) in a ribeye section at the USDA standard grading point between the 12th and 13th ribs. This method of marbling evaluation equates to approximately 20% marbling per an ether extract laboratory evaluation of a sample of longissimus dorsi (Ribeye). By way of reference, that is 200% of the amount of marbling required for a USDA prime grade and also approximately equal to Australia’s AusMeat top marbling score of 9!