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The story
The horse sashimi culture passed down through generations in Fukushima’s Aizu region is facing a crisis of survival. The local meat processing center hasn’t been upgraded in over 60 years and has fallen into disrepair, with machine breakdowns even bringing the horse and pig processing lines to a halt. Renovations would cost ¥1.8 billion, and a full rebuild ¥4.7 billion — the chairman of the organization that runs the facility revealed the grim reality, saying “in the end, it will come down to closing the slaughterhouse.” On 5ch, reactions ranged from surprise that Aizu is actually Japan’s second-largest horse meat producer after Kumamoto, to questions about why management neglected capital investment for 60 years, to sarcastic jabs from horse-racing fans.
The horse sashimi culture handed down in Fukushima’s Aizu region draws visitors from Japan and abroad, all seeking out its thick-sliced deliciousness. But the meat processing center that sustains that flavor has fallen into disrepair, with machine breakdowns even halting the slaughtering process. Facing barriers in the subsidy system and enormous renovation costs, how can this local food culture be protected? On the ground, the struggle to find a way forward continues.
■ The “last bastion” supporting horse sashimi culture
At Okubo Shoten, a horse sashimi specialty shop in Inawashiro, what’s served is ultra-fresh Aizu-brand horse sashimi. A visitor from Hong Kong said, “The thick slices really let you taste the flavor — it was delicious.” A visitor from Chiba Prefecture said, “It’s so tender, totally different from what I eat back home. It was amazing.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Thread's over
Yeah, that's true, but Aizu's horse sashimi is cheap and delicious
Aizu is the true home of horse meat
They're using meat from Canada and the US anyway…
First time I've heard of it
In terms of production volume, it's #2 in Japan after Kumamoto
It's horse racing's responsibility
I want to eat some Gold Ship sashimi ("Golshi" — nickname for the famous racehorse Gold Ship)
Rude, but he's not wrong.
They could at least put up some funding.
Maybe they figured it'd fade out like whale meat did?
Kumamoto's comes from large horses, so the fatty meat is tasty
Nagano's horse sashimi is imported horse (´･ω･｀)
Both Aizu's and Kumamoto's are almost all imported meat
I remember the horse sashimi in Aizubange being really good
Was there even a horse sashimi place in Bange (local nickname for Aizubange)?
So I guess that means I'll be just fine without it going forward too
If you're a local, horse sashimi means Bange
all the traffic lights are vertical
and all the 7-Eleven signage is black
The vertical lights are to handle heavy snowfall
The black signage is to preserve the townscape
In September 2026, the equipment for transporting pigs stopped working too, and the renovation cost covering both the horse and pig facilities together comes to ¥1.8 billion.
Building a new facility from scratch is estimated at roughly ¥4.7 billion — nowhere near an amount they could realistically raise.
Chairman Hayao admits: 'In the end, it will come down to closing the slaughterhouse.
I want to preserve Aizu's horse meat culture, so what I'm thinking about most right now is how to keep this facility standing.'
The meat processing plant in Yoro, Gifu is the same way — relocation sites kept falling through, so it's still stuck with the old facility
I heard they're even buying up an entire mountainous area, pouring in a huge budget including large-scale water infrastructure work
Yeah, that place was making noise about its aging facilities too.
Wasn't it the Yanazu plant that was closing?
It seems consolidating everything into Yoro is settled, but the Gifu city mayor leading the project caused an uproar by announcing the closure of his own city's slaughterhouse before the new facility's details were even finalized.
They've been propped up by Hida beef this whole time, so they could at least cough up some money.
Turns out they weren't making much profit at all — they just kept it running in the name of 'culture' and all that
Do their finances really not include any reserve fund for capital investment?
For livestock about the size of a chicken, you don't need much of a facility to process them, though…
The idea that horses can be eaten raw because their high body temperature kills off germs is a myth.
In reality, long before chicken, pork, beef, or lamb, horse processing plants were legally required to maintain strict hygiene standards, which is what made raw consumption possible.
Strict hygiene regulation for pork and beef only came in during the late Showa to early Heisei era (roughly the 1970s–1990s).
Chicken still isn't held to such strict standards, which is why people in Kyushu still eat it raw today and frequently get food poisoning from it
You need pretty proper equipment, and the animal has to be processed within about an hour of the kill or it can't be sold as meat
It's really difficult to pull off
I used to just field-dress mine by some random stream, so it was never sellable — strictly self-consumption only
That's the opposite of gamey lol
It has less of a strong taste than beef, pork, or chicken
It's more like tuna lol
It's so sad⋯
If they didn't become meat, they'd just get killed off sooner instead
It's actually really good for your health though — nice and lean
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Aizu is Japan’s second-largest producer of horse meat after Kumamoto, and its dedicated slaughtering facility hadn’t been touched in over 60 years. The repair cost of ¥1.8 billion, or ¥4.7 billion for a full rebuild, is a scale that a small regional facility running combined horse-and-pig processing lines simply cannot cover — and a similar aging-infrastructure problem has also emerged at the Yoro meat processing plant in Gifu, showing this is a structural issue inherent to local primary industries. In the thread, pushback along the lines of “Kumamoto is the real deal” collided with fact-checks pointing out that “Aizu’s production ranks high too,” alongside visible criticism of management for neglecting investment and sarcastic calls for the horse-racing industry to chip in funding. One point readers can easily get wrong is the popular myth that horse meat can be eaten raw simply because of horses’ high body temperature — in reality, horse processing facilities were legally required to meet strict hygiene standards earlier than those for other livestock, and the difference in raw-eating risk with chicken comes down to that gap in regulatory oversight, a piece of background that’s hard to glean from the article itself.
※This article is composed as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “[Fukushima] Will Aizu’s Horse Sashimi Disappear? Aging Meat Processing Center Threatens Food Culture, ¥1.8 Billion Needed for Renovation… Challenges Pile Up Over Survival.”
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