Meat production has increased globally over the past decades and is expected to keep growing. At the same time, consumers have become more demanding with respect to the quality of meat and meat products. This presents a big challenge for meat producers and retailers due to the intrinsic variability of the raw material but also generates the necessity to develop, improve, and upgrade the actual quality analysis for faster and more reliable ones. In the same line, with the recent technological and biotechnological advances new possibilities have opened for the meat production and processing sector and improvements of the quality assessment and assurance throughout the whole processing chain have now become a reality.

The aim of this special issue is to cover the recent advances on quality assurance and assessment of meat and meat products. We encourage the submission of original research papers focused on the development of innovative technologies to promote quality of meat and meat products, prioritising those that can be applied in the processing line. It will cover animal welfare, carcass characterisation, physicochemical and functional properties, and sensory drivers of both fresh meat and processed meat products. Detection, traceability, and authenticity quality markers are also part of the scope.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• New insights for animal welfare and meat quality
• Novel techniques for carcass characterisation
• Sustainability of meat production
• Recent developments and understanding of palatability determination in fresh meat and processed meat products
• Sensory quality of fresh meat and processed meat products
• Composition and nutritional value of fresh meat and processed meat products
• New management and processing and packaging techniques to ensure meat quality and shelf-life
• Use of emerging technologies to ameliorate the quality of meat and meat products
• Omic approaches to identify biomarkers for meat quality and fraud detection
• Genetic and genomic tools to improve meat quality
• Microbial contamination of fresh meat and processed meat products