Japanese Buy L.A. Meat Firm for $41 Million : Agriculture: The purchase of Best Western Food Inc. by Kyotaru Co. comes as the Japanese market is opening to imported beef.

In another sign of increasing Japanese investment in the U.S. beef business, a Tokyo-based chain of family restaurants has purchased Best Western Food Inc., a Los Angeles meat processor, a company spokeswoman said Thursday.

Kyotaru Co. bought Best Western for a reported $41.26 million. What it gets from the deal is a guaranteed supply of U.S. beef--a product that is increasingly popular with Japanese consumers, beef industry sources said.

“The Japanese know that, with consumption on the rise . . . they’re going to have to diversify as far as supply is concerned, fill their needs with products from the U.S. and Australia,” said Mark Gustafson, vice president for technical services and research at the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

Until two years ago, Japan would allow only 300,000 tons of imported beef into the country each year. Since Japanese quotas for imported beef were eased in July, 1988, Japanese investors have raced into the U.S. cattle market, buying up ranches, feedlots and meat-processing plants.

The quotas were designed to protect the Japanese beef industry, whose products command ultra-high prices because of the high cost of production in the country, where little land can be spared for cattle raising. But in 1988, Japan and the United States signed an agreement that has increased the quota by 60,000 tons each year. The agreement also provides for an end to Japanese beef quotas in 1991.

Statistics are hard to come by, but Japanese investors are reported to have purchased 20 to 30 cattle ranches and related enterprises, about half of them in California.

The flashiest purchase so far was the 1988 acquisition of the former Selkirk ranch in Dillon, Mont. Selkirk boasts nearly 80,000 acres of ranchland. It was bought for a reported $13 million and has since been renamed the Zenchiku Land & Cattle Co.

But some industry watchers contend that there is more Japanese interest in meat-processing companies than in feedlots and ranchland, and more interest in cooperative agreements than in out-right acquisitions.

“I’m not aware of Japanese buyouts of a major part of the industry,” said John Auciello, assistant executive director of the American Assn. of Meat Processors. “We see increased cooperative agreements, long-term contracts to buy product. That could be a prelude to future purchases.”

Best Western officials declined to comment further on the acquisition, and Kyotaru officials could not be reached Thursday.

According to reports published in the economic newspaper Nihon Keizai and distributed by Kyodo News Service, Best Western will supply beef to the Kyotaru restaurant chain.

Best Western had sales of $66.13 million in 1989, according to Kyotaru.