I have never eaten any top class wagyu, but I occasionally eat Shizuoka wagyu and I have a very good butcher in my town (in Shizuoka Japan). I have also eaten

I have never eaten any top class wagyu, but I occasionally eat Shizuoka wagyu and I have a very good butcher in my town (in Shizuoka Japan). I have also eaten wagyu style beef from Australia. I don't know if it was representative of the quality that Australia is producing, but it was quite a bit cheaper than the wagyu I can get in my local area. For the beef I ate, there would be no need for double blind. The texture is quite different and anyone could pick it out. I do not know what cut it was, though. Wagyu tends to be sliced very thinly in Japan, so it really could have been anything. I've seen some Australian wagyu style steaks in the super market, but I'm not a fan of that style of steak so I've never bothered to try it. If what I tried was representative (and the article seems to suggest that it might have been), they still have a ways to go. However, there is wide range of quality in wagyu in Japan too. I can believe that it is possible that there are individual foreign producers that can produce top quality wagyu. I suspect that the low price, high volume fare will probably never quite make it, though. Just looking at the cattle farms near me (if you can call the back yard sized lots "farms"), I'm not sure that a large producer would be capable of replicating the conditions. Some of the farms near here have 10-20 head of cattle! They have attention lavished on them by the farmer. And I don't live in a famous wagyu area by any means. Anyway, it's just a data point, but I hope it proves interesting.