Letting Nothing Go to Waste: Promoting Game Meat as Everyday Cuisine at Osaka-Kansai Expo

I tasted game meat for the first time at a little French inn in Burgundy that I visited for training when I was 20. I was impressed by its flavor. I knew that deer and boar were wild animals, but I never realized how delicious they could be. Along with game meat, the inn served local ingredients and wine while making sure to share the story behind all ingredients with their guests. That visit taught me that small inns are the best places to experience the charms of local areas.

While promoting wider consumption of game meat, I learned about the growing nationwide problem of wildlife damage and found out that 90% of captured wild birds and mammals are discarded. I thought that if I could show people that game meat is a valuable food resource, it would help regions suffering from damage and, at the same time, lead to a greater variety of delicious meat options on the market. I figured I had a chance to make that happen as a professional chef, so I founded the Japan Gibier Promotion Council (renamed later to the Japan Gibier Promotion Association) in 2012. We have been working with the MAFF and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) to promote game meat together with local governments and businesses across the country ever since.

In my opinion as a professional chef, game meat is the most fun ingredient to work with. Unlike farmed meat, the taste and texture of natural, wild-sourced meat vary between individual animals. Therefore, you need to adjust your cooking method each time you cook game meat to really bring out its unique flavor profile.

For example, the farmed meat available on the market comes only from female animals and castrated males. But what about meat from male deer and wild boars? It pairs well with strong spices, and its characteristic robust flavor can be utilized in curries, stews, and Chinese dishes. On the other hand, meat from female and young animals is better suited for roasting or simple pan-frying.

The meat quality differs depending on the hunting area, which is one of the characteristics of game meat. For instance, the fat of boars from　Japan’s southern prefecture of Kagoshima has a sweet taste to it thanks to the sweet potatoes that they eat. On the other hand, since boars in Chiba, a prefecture east of Tokyo, eat chestnuts and other nuts, their meat tastes like Iberico pork. My point is that we take a good look at each cut of game meat that we purchase to see its characteristics and cook it accordingly. Also, part of what makes game meat appealing is that it’s red meat that’s easy on the palate, lean, and rich in protein.

The “Domestic Gibier Certification System” and other standards must be popularized both among providers and consumers. There are also cases when people have a misconception that game meat tastes bad because the one they ate was cooked using the wrong method. So, first of all, I think that there’s a need to properly train suppliers and providers.

At the Expo, we will present videos and interactive content showcasing the efforts of the MAFF in regard to wildlife damage and hold tastings of dishes using game meat with a domestic gibier certification. I would be delighted if these tastings helped people appreciate how delicious game meat can be.

This will also serve as a great opportunity to introduce our domestic initiative to visitors from overseas. Although wildlife damage is an issue that occurs worldwide, Japan is the only country to address it by taking national measures. With worldwide concerns about food shortages and the call for SDGs, we have been building an environment where game meat can be safely consumed without any worries and encouraging people to appreciate the lives of wild animals and not waste the meat. Our initiative fits perfectly with the Expo’s main theme of “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.”