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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.

Despite efforts by the industry to control the eating quality of beef, there remains a high level of variability in palatability, which is one reason for consumer dissatisfaction. In Europe, there is still no reliable on-line tool to predict beef quality and deliver consistent quality beef to consumers. Beef quality traits depend in part on the physical and chemical properties of the muscles. The determination of these properties (known as muscle profiling) will allow for more informed decisions to be made in the selection of individual muscles for the production of value-added products. Therefore, scientists and professional partners of the ProSafeBeef project have brought together all the data they have accumulated over 20 years. The resulting BIF-Beef (Integrated and Functional Biology of Beef) data warehouse contains available data of animal growth, carcass composition, muscle tissue characteristics and beef quality traits. This database is useful to determine the most important muscle characteristics associated with a high tenderness, a high flavour or generally a high quality. Another more consumer driven modelling tool was developed in Australia: the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) grading scheme that predicts beef quality for each individual muscle x specific cooking method combination using various information on the corresponding animals and post-slaughter processing factors. This system has also the potential to detect variability in quality within muscles. The MSA system proved to be effective in predicting beef palatability not only in A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTAustralia but also in many other countries. The results of the work conducted in Europe within the ProSafeBeef project indicate that it would be possible to manage a grading system in Europe similar to the MSA system. The combination of the different modelling approaches (namely muscle biochemistry and a MSA-like meat grading system adapted to the European market) is a promising area of research to improve the prediction of beef quality. In both approaches, the volume of data available not only provides statistically sound correlations between various factors and beef quality traits but also a better understanding of the variability of beef quality according to various criteria (breed, age, sex, pH, marbling etc).

BackgroundAn important controversy in the relationship between beef tenderness and muscle characteristics including biochemical traits exists among meat researchers. The aim of this study is to explain variability in meat tenderness using muscle characteristics and biochemical traits available in the Integrated and Functional Biology of Beef (BIF-Beef) database. The BIF-Beef data warehouse contains characteristic measurements from animal, muscle, carcass, and meat quality derived from numerous experiments. We created three classes for tenderness (high, medium, and low) based on trained taste panel tenderness scores of all meat samples consumed (4,366 observations from 40 different experiments). For each tenderness class, the corresponding means for the mechanical characteristics, muscle fibre type, collagen content, and biochemical traits which may influence tenderness of the muscles were calculated.ResultsOur results indicated that lower shear force values were associated with more tender meat. In addition, muscles in the highest tenderness cluster had the lowest total and insoluble collagen contents, the highest mitochondrial enzyme activity (isocitrate dehydrogenase), the highest proportion of slow oxidative muscle fibres, the lowest proportion of fast-glycolytic muscle fibres, and the lowest average muscle fibre cross-sectional area. Results were confirmed by correlation analyses, and differences between muscle types in terms of biochemical characteristics and tenderness score were evidenced by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). When the cluster analysis was repeated using only muscle samples from m. Longissimus thoracis (LT), the results were similar; only contrasting previous results by maintaining a relatively constant fibre-type composition between all three tenderness classes.ConclusionOur results show that increased meat tenderness is related to lower shear forces, lower insoluble collagen and total collagen content, lower cross-sectional area of fibres, and an overall fibre type composition displaying more oxidative fibres than glycolytic fibres.

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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”.