Jessie Chiconi identified as emerging future leader in Wagyu industry

You can have all the eye muscle and marbling in the world but if it doesn't taste good no one is going to continually pay a premium for it

Jessie Chiconi's passion for Wagyu is unparalleled.

She could talk all day about the attributes of this fascinating breed.

Just ask her and she'll tell you it's the fastest growing and most exciting beef breed in the world today.

Identified as a future breed leader and speaker at the 2024 International Wagyu Conference hosted by the Australian Wagyu Association, Ms Chiconi has been singing the praises of Wagyu cattle for the last decade, before being a breed specialist was a thing.

Dubbed by her peers as the Wagyu 'nerd', she has played a pivotal role in her husband's family Wagyu enterprise, Chiconi Grazing, in western Queensland, for the past 10 years, and has recently transitioned to a new role in marketing and communications at Mort and Co, in Toowoomba, leveraging her connections throughout the beef industry to promote the business.

Wagyu has become an obsession for the 35-year-old mother of two to Hailey, and Samuel, whose nine years of studying Japanese at school has certainly paid off.

Ms Chiconi said she had been privileged to create and maintain some extraordinary connections and mentorships on a global level.

GLOBAL BUSINESS

With plans to establish her own global beef consultation business, Ms Chiconi lists among her mentors some of the leading international Wagyu breeders including Ken Kurosawatsu and Kevin Hayden from Wagyu Sekai in Canada.

"They have been instrumental in challenging me to delve deeper into genetic analysis and understand the importance of maternal lines and traditional Japanese methods of breeding Wagyu," she said.

"These gents produce feedstock, semen and embryos for the best Wagyu producers in the world.

"I receive homework from Ken and Kevin on nearly a daily basis to continue researching the genetic framework, learning something new every day, to which they believe my current position at Mort and Co is relevant to me attending university, and to honour this opportunity that Mort and Co has given me as it can enable me to become a professor in Wagyu production.

"To have such access to data and applying quantitative genetic analysis to lifetime, performance and carcase data, the world is my oyster!"

BREEDING PASSION

Growing up on her parents 16,194 hectare property, west of Charleville, where they ran Santa Gertrudis, Ms Chiconi has always been around cattle, also playing an important role in her family's successful Fairfield Charolais stud, south of Roma.

"My father, Lindsay Hindle is a respected cattleman and studmaster. That's where I got my passion for breeding bovines and understanding structural integrity. Lifetime performance in various phenotypical and geographical locations is paramount for financial viability as producers," she said.

"However I went into commercial Angus production when I got married, and about 10 years ago, we moved into Wagyu. Leveraging my commercial and stud background from my upbringing, this knowledge of the intricacies of breeding worked really well for me."

All this aside, Ms Chiconi wasn't convinced about Wagyu until she tasted it at the 2017 AWA Conference, in Albury, and it changed the way she viewed the breed forever.

"It was an epiphany for me actually. The waitstaff were bringing around platters of cubed gold medal sirloin from Mayura Station and I'd never had Wagyu before. I thought at the time, meat is meat - surely it can't be that much better? Someone told me to appreciate the moment because you're about to have a life-changing experience and that's exactly what it was. It was like a beef Malteser and it struck a chord within me.

ALL ABOUT EATING

"While I'm so incredibly passionate about the beef industry and breeding, initially for aesthetics and structural integrity etc, the beef industry is about eating it, not so much looking at it. The flavour profile of that Mayura Station meat is what changed my entire perspective of beef.

"I've been very fortunate in the years since that experience, that I've spent some time at Mayura and their restaurant, The Tasting Room. I've learned so much about how their vertically integrated operation focuses on consumer nuances and consumer satisfaction.

"You can have all the eye muscle and marbling in the world but if it doesn't taste good no one is going to continually pay a premium for it."

Ms Chiconi believes the future of Wagyu really must heavily focus on flavour profile.

"The majority of flavour profile is derived from maternal lines; it feels as though there has been too much emphasis placed on sire stacking in all breeds, not just Wagyu, and not focusing on quality females," she said.

"Without understanding how foundation females function and doing quantitative genetic analysis, correlating all lifetime and carcase performance of their progeny, if you don't have those foundation animals correct in your female cow families, then you struggle to have predictability, consistency and integrity as a producer."

CARCASE QUALITY

While structural integrity and conformation are important in any breed, once you see them on the hook, it doesn't matter what they look like on the ground, according to Ms Chiconi.

"At the end of the day, it's all about the carcase quality. And the beauty of the Wagyu industry is that producers are open to adaptation. Wagyu production is a science, as is the entirety of the beef industry. That is why it is imperative to collect such vast amounts of data, on multiple metrics over their entire lifetimes.

"A philosophy within the beef industry that needs to be reversed is that it shouldn't be paddock to plate, it should be palate to paddock, and for producers to understand consumer satisfaction and adjust breeding programs to suit those nuances, takes a very long time to change."

Ms Chiconi's mantra is to absorb as much knowledge of beef production as is humanly possible across the entire supply chain.

"You can learn so much from everybody - from conception to consumer. Everyone involved with Wagyu is so forthcoming with knowledge, and at Mort and Co I look forward to working closely with Wagyu operations manager, Berry Reynolds."