Search

We hypothesized that transportation might impact beef sensory quality, particularly as the distance between farms and the slaughterhouse increases. Specifically, we expected that pre-slaughter transport over longer distances would induce stress in the cattle, resulting in elevated ultimate pH and, consequently, reduced beef quality. Thus, this study aimed to specifically study the effects of transport in commercial conditions of Limousin cows from farms located in different areas of France to slaughter on ultimate pH (pHu) measured in the Longissimus thoracis muscle (LT), marbling (two major factors affecting eating quality) and the MSA Index (a global indicator of potential eating quality at the carcass level). Cattle were studied according to distance (

The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of sociodemographic characteristics on willingness to try (WTT), regularly eat (WTE), or pay (WTP) for artificial meat, its expected societal challenges and general acceptance as well as its future potential development in Germany. Answers to an online questionnaire by 3,558 potential German adult consumers were evaluated. About 63% of the respondents thought this novel food was promising/acceptable. The vast majority (70%) stated that they would be willing to try it, with the most important drivers being ethics, curiosity and eco-friendliness. Around 57% of the participants said they would be willing to eat artificial meat regularly. Most of the respondents (40%) were willing to pay the same price for artificial as for conventional meat. In terms of its future potential, almost 75% of respondents believed that this new product would become commercialized in more than five years and that it was perceived as a solution that is both more ethical (67%) and more environmentally friendly (58%) than traditional meat. In addition, there were significant impacts of demographic factors on the willingness to engage with artificial meat. For example, high WTT and WTE were found among young male respondents (18–30 years of age), males that rarely consumed meat or had a low income (< €1,500). This also applied to the female respondents, who, however, belonged to higher income classes. Young German consumers with a high level of education or income up to €3,000 as well as consumers who did not eat meat had a high WTP for this novel food. In addition, respondents’ positive opinion and acceptance of artificial meat had a positive influence on WTT and WTP. These results are important for the discussion of a paradigm shift in global meat production with respect to sustainability, demand for meat and the adoption of new food products.

Cell-based food, including cultured meat, introduces an innovative complement to our dietary options, introducing cellular agriculture and tissue engineering on the meat market together with traditional livestock farming. Originating from medical tissue cultivation techniques, this approach is now tailored for food production, prioritizing cost-effectiveness, palatability, and resource efficiency. As technology strives to efficiently upscale production, consumer acceptance stands as a key factor in adopting this new protein source. This review explores advances in cultivating muscle and fat tissues in vitro, emphasizing the importance of achieving muscle maturity, innovating scaffolds, and optimizing media composition to closely replicate the qualities of meat. It also addresses quality assessments of cultured meat based on its texture, nutritional content, and flavor. A concise examination of consumer perceptions reveals that acceptance is influenced by a blend of cultural, psychological, and social factors, balancing the positive potential outlook on cultured meat’s benefits for society, the environment, and animal welfare against concerns about its unnaturalness, uncertainty, and safety. Demographic trends suggest higher acceptance among younger, well-educated and urban individuals, contrasting with reservations from those more familiar with the traditional meat sector. Addressing these varied viewpoints is essential for a better understanding of public acceptance if cultured meat is effectively introduced into our future food systems. As media interest in this alternative is still high, aligning technological developments with consumer expectations is crucial for the potential market introduction of cultured meat.

The impact of the meat sector on the environment is critical and meat alternatives have been suggested as solutions to mitigate it. This study aimed to understand the attitudes, motives, and attributes shaping consumer willingness to try (WTT), eat regularly (WTE), and pay (WTP) for cultured meat having, as a case study, a sample of 838 Greek residents. The results primarily reflected the views of younger and well-educated consumers. Although this demographic was not the initial target, it was considered the anticipated primary market for cultured meat upon its launch. A total of 58% of the respondents expressed WTT cultured meat, with primarily Gen Z showing a higher positive attitude toward it. However, the WTT was primarily driven by curiosity and it was not reflected in WTE or in WTP. Greek consumers prioritized a set of characteristics they would expect from cultured meat, giving emphasis to factors such as taste, safety, and nutritional value. The importance of clear and non-misleading naming to preserve consumers’ right to know what they are purchasing was also underlined. In conclusion, the potential acceptance of cultured meat in Greece is influenced by many factors, including generational shifts, product characteristics, naming and promotion.

The aim of this study was to investigate how consumers (n = 2,171) originated from South-Western Europe (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) perceive cultured “meat” (CM) and if their demographic characteristics (origin, gender, age, education, occupation, and meat consumption) are related to their willingness to try (WTT), to regularly eat (WTE) and to pay (WTP) for CM. We found the current respondents had an initially positive attitude towards CM: 49% of them perceived CM as “promising and/or acceptable” and 23% “fun and/or intriguing” whereas 29% considered it as “absurd and/or disgusting”. In addition, 66 and 25% would be willing and not willing to try CM, respectively. However, 43% had no WTE for CM and, 94% would not pay more for CM compared to conventional meat. Age and especially occupation were good indicators of consumer acceptance of CM. Respondents of 18–30 years of age had the highest acceptance. Respondents outside the meat sector had the highest WTE and people working within the meat sector had the lowest WTE, scientists (within or outside the meat sector) had the highest WTT, people not scientists but within the meat sector had the lowest WTT. Additionally, we found that men are more likely to accept CM than women, Spanish-speaking consumers had the highest WTT and WTE, people with vegan and vegetarian diets may pay more for CM but generally no more than for conventional meat. The perceptions that CM may be more eco-friendly, ethical, safe and healthy than conventional meat, and to a lower extent, the perception that current meat production causes ethical and environmental problems are likely to be major motives for the current respondents to try, regularly eat and pay for CM. On the opposite, lower perceptions of CM benefits and of conventional meat weaknesses more generally, plus emotional resistance towards CM are main barriers to accept CM.

African’s population is expected to grow especially in cities to reach about 2.5 billion in 2050. This will create an unprecedented boom in the demand for animal products over the coming years which will need to be managed properly. Industry stakeholders worldwide have been touting the potential benefits of “artificial meat” in recent years as a more sustainable way of producing animal protein. “Artificial meat” is therefore moving into the global spotlight and this study aimed to investigate how African meat consumers of the coming generations perceive it, i.e., the urban, more educated and younger consumers. Three surveys were conducted with more than 12,000 respondents in total. The respondents came from 12 different countries (Cameroon, Congo, -DRC Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal South Africa, Tanzania and Tunisia). Respondents in this survey prefered the term “artificial meat”. This term was therefore used throughout the survey. “Artificial meat” proved to be fairly well known in the surveyed countries as about 64% the respondents had already heard of “artificial meat.” Only 8.9% were definitely willing to try “artificial meat” (score of 5 on a scale of 1–5) mostly males between 31 and 50 years of age. Furthermore, 31.2% strongly agreed that “artificial meat” will have a negative impact on the rural life (score of 5 on a scale of 1–5) and 32.9% were not prepared to accept “artificial meat” as a viable alternative in the future but were still prepared to eat meat alternatives. Of all the results, we observed significant differences in responses between respondents’ countries of origin, age and education level with interactions between these factors for willingness to try. For instance, the richest and most educated countries that were surveyed tended to be more willing to try “artificial meat.” A similar pattern was observed for willingness to pay, except that gender had no significant effect and age had only a small effect. One major observation is that a large majority of respondents are not willing to pay more for “artificial meat” than for meat from livestock.

Développer les alternatives à la viande est présenté comme une solution pour renforcer la durabilité de l’alimentation tout en apportant des sources de nutriments indispensables (protéines, micronutriments…), notamment pour des régimes végétariens, végans voire flexitariens. Cela peut aussi permettre une diversification du marché de l’agroalimentaire par une plus grande offre de produits aux consommateurs. Mais d’un point de vue nutritionnel, la digestibilité de certains nutriments reste mal connue, et les process pour reproduire les mêmes qualités organoleptiques que la viande sont en cours de développement. Par ailleurs, d’un point de vue économique, le consentement à payer par le consommateur dépend de plusieurs facteurs. Cet article fait le point sur les travaux menés au niveau mondial, entre 1997 et 2021, portant sur trois alternatives, les analogues végétaux, la « viande in vitro » et les insectes. Les indicateurs suivants sont décrits : i) la qualité nutritionnelle (teneur en protéines et leur digestibilité, quantité de graisses et proportion d’acides insaturés, quantité et biodisponibilité du fer et de la vitamine B12), ii) les qualités organoleptiques, et iii) la disposition à payer. Pour les analogues végétaux, une amélioration de de la qualité nutritionnelle (notamment en fer héminique et vitamine B12) et sensorielle est nécessaire pour séduire une partie de la population fortement attachée à la viande, ainsi que les consommateurs atteints de néophobie alimentaire et/ou technologique. Pour la « viande in vitro », en plus de l’amélioration de sa qualité nutritionnelle, son prix est encore inaccessible au grand public. Enfin, l’incorporation des insectes en tant qu’ingrédients semble plus intéressante pour les consommateurs occidentaux, moins habitués à la consommation des insectes entiers.

Cultured meat is presented by its advocates as a good alternative for consumers who want to be more ethically minded but who do not wish to change their diet. This novel food has become an emerging topic in both the scientific field and the press media. From a bibliometric analysis of scientific publications and on a sociometric analysis of the mainstream press, the aim of this study was to identify potential differences between the scientific view and the public perception. This research analyzed the publications indexed by SCI-EXPANDED in the Web of Science Core Collection database owned by Clarivate Analytics, for scientific literature analysis, and indexed by the Factiva database, for the press media. A total of 327 scientific publications were analyzed according to year of publication and country and institution of origin, also including coauthorships, co-citations, and scientific fields' and journals' networks. A knowledge mapping using VOSviewer was used to study the literature in the field. Based on Factiva, 12,900 press articles dealing with artificial meat, mainly in English, have been found through public databases. The main conclusion is that cultured meat is mainly developing in the USA and the UK, with other countries, such as China, observing the trend for potential future applications. Scientific articles seemed initially to focus mainly on technical aspects of artificial meat and more recently on health value, consumer's acceptance, and sustainability. However, the potential environment-friendly effects of this novel food are more and more studied or described in scientific or press articles.

The main goal of this online survey was to investigate the attitudes of Brazilians towards “cell-based meat”, which has become the subject of great scientific and media enthusiasm. The answers of 4471 respondents concluded that 46.6% of them thought “cell-based meat” was promising and acceptable. More than 66% would be willing to try this novel product compared to 23% who expressed reluctance to do so. Nearly 40% of the total respondents did not want to eat “cell-based meat” regularly at all, whereas 29%, 43.2%, and 39.9% were willing to eat it regularly in restaurants, at home, and/or in ready-made meals, respectively. However, the majority of respondents (71%) were keen to pay much less for “cell-based meat” than conventionally produced meat (or even nothing at all), compared to 24.3% who were willing to pay the same price as conventional meat, whereas only 4.8% were willing to pay more. Approximately 51% of them considered that “cell-based meat” should not be called “meat” for marketing purposes. Job, monthly income, age, and gender were major factors impacting consumer acceptance. Meat professionals and consumers with higher incomes were less willing to eat “cell-based meat” regularly. Women (especially younger women) were the most concerned about the ethical and environmental issues related to meat production and were the most convinced that reducing meat consumption could be a good solution to the meat industry’s problems. Respondents who did not accept “cell-based meat” and did not eat meat substitutes had a negative attitude to this novel food (they considered it absurd and/or disgusting) and did not believe that “cell-based meat” should be called “meat” for marketing purposes. In contrast, the people who thought that “cell-based meat” could be called “meat” perceived it in a rather positive way. These results are important for consumers of meat and meat substitutes and for companies aiming to enter the potential future Brazilian market of “cell-based meat”.

To satisfy the increasing demand for food by the growing human population, cultured meat (also called in vitro, artificial or lab-grown meat) is presented by its advocates as a good alternative for consumers who want to be more responsible but do not wish to change their diet. This review aims to update the current knowledge on this subject by focusing on recent publications and issues not well described previously. The main conclusion is that no major advances were observed despite many new publications. Indeed, in terms of technical issues, research is still required to optimize cell culture methodology. It is also almost impossible to reproduce the diversity of meats derived from various species, breeds and cuts. Although these are not yet known, we speculated on the potential health benefits and drawbacks of cultured meat. Unlike conventional meat, cultured muscle cells may be safer, without any adjacent digestive organs. On the other hand, with this high level of cell multiplication, some dysregulation is likely as happens in cancer cells. Likewise, the control of its nutritional composition is still unclear, especially for micronutrients and iron. Regarding environmental issues, the potential advantages of cultured meat for greenhouse gas emissions are a matter of controversy, although less land will be used compared to livestock, ruminants in particular. However, more criteria need to be taken into account for a comparison with current meat production. Cultured meat will have to compete with other meat substitutes, especially plant-based alternatives. Consumer acceptance will be strongly influenced by many factors and consumers seem to dislike unnatural food. Ethically, cultured meat aims to use considerably fewer animals than conventional livestock farming. However, some animals will still have to be reared to harvest cells for the production of in vitro meat. Finally, we discussed in this review the nebulous status of cultured meat from a religious point of view. Indeed, religious authorities are still debating the question of whether in vitro meat is Kosher or Halal (e.g., compliant with Jewish or Islamic dietary laws).

The interest for artificial meat has recently expanded. However, from the literature, perception of artificial meat in China is not well known. A survey was thus carried out to investigate Chinese attitudes toward artificial meat. The answers of 4666 respondents concluded that 19.9% and 9.6% of them were definitely willing and unwilling to try artificial meat respectively, whereas 47.2% were not willing to eat it regularly, and 87.2% were willing to pay less for it compared to conventional meat. Finally, 52.9% of them will accept artificial meat as an alternative to conventional meat. Emotional resistance such as the perception of “absurdity or disgusting” would lead to no willingness to eat artificial meat regularly. The main concerns were related to safety and unnaturalness, but less to ethical and environmental issues as in Western countries. Nearly half of the respondents would like artificial meat to be safe, tasty, and nutritional. Whereas these expectations have low effects on willingness to try, they may induce consumers’ rejection to eat artificial meat regularly, underlying the weak relationship between wishes to try and to eat regularly. Thus, potential acceptance of artificial meat in China depends on Chinese catering culture, perception of food and traditional philosophy.

The beef industry is organized around different stakeholders, each with their own expectations, sometimes antagonistic. This article first outlines these differing perspectives. Then, various optimization models that might integrate all these expectations are described. The final goal is to define practices that could increase value for animal production, carcasses and meat whilst simultaneously meeting the main expectations of the beef industry. Different models previously developed worldwide are proposed here. Two new computational methodologies that allow the simultaneous selection of the best regression models and the most interesting covariates to predict carcass and/or meat quality are developed. Then, a method of variable clustering is explained that is accurate in evaluating the interrelationships between different parameters of interest. Finally, some principles for the management of quality trade-offs are presented and the Meat Standards Australia model is discussed. The “Pareto front” is an interesting approach to deal jointly with the different sets of expectations and to propose a method that could optimize all expectations together.

The BIF-Beef (Beef Integrated and Functional Biology) database contains animal, carcass, muscle and meat data (331,745 entries) collected from 43 experiments over the last 20 years and a great number of variables (621) characterising muscles (fat and collagen contents, cross-section and types of fibres, metabolic activity), making it a relevant tool to relate muscle characteristics to beef quality. Wide variation was observed in all described traits according to muscle type, sex and breed. The BIF-Beef database was mainly composed of data from young bulls of late-maturing beef breeds, which is why live weight and carcass weights of the animals were greater, and beef was leaner and lighter than results from other existing databases. Average cross-sectional area of fibres was greater in Semitendinosus than in Longissimus thoracis muscle and, for Longissimus, greater in steers than in young bulls. Intramuscular fat content was in descending order: Charolais > Limousin > Blond d’Aquitaine and females > steers > young bulls. Semitendinosus muscle was less oxidative and contained more collagen than Longissimus muscle. Collagen content in Longissimus was higher in Charolais than in Blond d’Aquitaine and Limousin young bulls. Within the Charolais breed, collagen content in Longissimus was higher in young bulls and steers than in females. Longissimus samples from young bulls were less tender than from females. Based on the above results, this database is a prerequisite for meta-analysis of relationships between muscle characteristics and beef quality in the European context.