The future of meat: innovations in production within an expanding and sustainable food system

Abstract

Meat has played a central role in human evolution, shaping not only our diets but also our societies, cultures, and technologies. From early hunting practice to the domestication and systematic production of livestock, the history of meat production closely parallels human development. Today, however, industrial meat production faces growing challenges, including environmental sustainability, resource efficiency, ethical concerns, and evolving consumer expectations. In this review, the transformation of meat production is discussed, with a focus on emerging scientific and technological innovations aimed at improving meat quality, sustainability, and production efficiency. In addition, the concept of cellular agriculture is summarized as a complementary approach for producing future agricultural products, including protein sources, along with conventional meat production and other meat alternative technologies. The future of meat is not merely a technological challenge, but a multidisciplinary endeavor, as the market introduction of cell-based foods, a key component of cellular agriculture, broadens the meat science landscape and enables innovation to advance alongside conventional meat production in support of sustainable and resilient food systems.

Introduction

Food, clothing, and shelter are the basic requisites of human beings. The development of these necessities has brought considerable changes in history. Among various kinds of food, scientists have discovered the importance of meat in our lives. Meat provides high-quality proteins, lipids, micronutrients, and a large quantity of energy (Godfray et al. 2018, Pereira and Vicente 2013). Due to its high nutritional value, meat has been regarded as an essential part of the human diet (Smet and Hecke 2024). Additionally, meat consumption has become an indispensable part of life in terms of culture, industry, enjoyment, etc. (Nam et al. 2010, Nungesser and Winter 2021). Therefore, understanding the significance of meat in human history will broaden our knowledge of the role of meat in present and future food systems.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world population would reach 9.73 billion by 2050, and global demand for livestock products, including meat, dairy, and eggs, would be estimated to increase by 8% (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2017). With the rapidly growing demand for livestock products worldwide, it is necessary to increase the efficiency of meat production through technological developments (Dilaver and Dilaver 2024, Meng et al. 2023). At the same time, today’s meat consumption has been facing societal and technological issues, such as controversy on human health, environmental impacts, animal welfare, food sustainability, changes in consumer trends and cultures, etc. (Goodwin and Shoulders 2013, Sun et al. 2021). In response to these increasing concerns, the livestock industry is required to take an active stance to solve the issues through various academic research and technological innovations.

In addition to the advances in the livestock industry, meat alternatives are considered as potential means of providing protein sources in future markets (Kołodziejczak et al. 2021). These generally refer to non-animal proteins obtained from plants or fermentation processes that are designed to mimic the sensory attributes of conventional meat without slaughtering animals (Nguyen et al. 2022). As another type of meat alternative, cell-based food (also called cultivated meat or cultured meat) is produced through in vitro cultivation of animal cells (Lee et al. 2023). Although these meat alternatives have limitations so far, including food neophobia, high prices, and technological hurdles to imitate real meat quality attributes, the emergence of cellular agriculture requires us to respond to the upcoming transition of paradigm in protein consumption and production (Stephens et al. 2018, Dijk et al. 2023). This situation encourages us to contemplate the future of meat: how meat and meat alternatives coexist in the future food system.

In light of the above situations, this review highlights the essential role of meat in human society in the past, present, and future. The historical and cultural changes in meat consumption are summarized, and innovative technologies in the conventional meat production system are introduced to address the recently raised issues. Additionally, information is provided about cellular agriculture as a means of producing one of the meat alternatives. Consequently, this review will discuss the central position of meat in the convergence of future food systems, focusing on how and what we produce in an innovative way.

Meat in human history

Meat consumption implies not only nutrition intake to meet physiological needs for survival, but sociogenesis to strengthen reciprocal relationships related to meat gathering and its distribution, and other symbolic meanings (Nam et al. 2010, Swatland 2010). Meat consumption has led to the biological, cultural, political-economic, and technological evolution of human life (Leroy and Praet 2015, Mann 2018). However, its significance has constantly changed throughout our history with technological revolutions, new knowledge and ideologies, environmental changes, etc. Table 1 summarized the changes in source of meat and its nutritional, cultural, and social significances with technological features in human history.

Table 1.

Overview of consumption, nutrition, and cultural roles of meat in human history

Historical period	Source of meat	Nutritional significance	Cultural and social significance	Technological features
Paleolithic era (< 10,000 B.C.E.)	• Scavenged carcass • Hunted game	• High-density protein, fat, and energy source which led to the biological evolution	• Source for survival	• Stone tools for hunting and butchery
			• Communal sharing	• Fire for cooking
			• Social bonding
Neolithic era (10,000–3,000 B.C.E.)	• Animal domestication	• Supplementary protein source	• Symbol of social status	• Animal breeding
		• Less frequently consumed	• Ritual sacrifices	• Simple preservation techniques e.g. drying and salting
Modern period (16–18th century)	• Livestock farming with selective breeding	• Increased protein intake that improved health condition	• Symbol of social power and privilege	• Increased livestock productivity
			• Development in gastronomy and culinary techniques	• Emergence of machineries
Contemporary period (After 20th century)	• Industrialized livestock farming	• Nutritional and functional foods	• Raised issues on health, ethical, and environmental influences	• Global cold-chain
		• Concerns on potential of carcinogenic and chronic diseases		• Automated manufacturing systems

Table 2.

Summary of recent findings on the effectiveness of novel aging techniques on meat quality

Technique	Raw material	Aging method	Treatments	Parameters	Findings	References
Stepwise aging	• Beef	• Dry and wet aging	• Dry + wet aging, freezing	• 1 °C, 78% RH, 17 days	• Decrease in purge/drip loss and increase in tenderness	(Kim et al. 2017)
	• Beef	• Dry and wet aging	• Dry + wet aging + dry bag	• 2 °C, 85% RH, 40 days	• Increase in SFA and MUFA, but not for sensory quality	(Correa et al. 2025)
	• Beef	• Dry and wet aging	• Dry + wet aging + dry bag	• 2 °C, 75% RH, 21 days	• Increase in low-molecular weight metabolite contents	(Zhang et al. 2021)
	• Beef	• Wet and dry aging	• Wet + dry aging	• 2 °C, 75% RH, 56 days	• Increase in sensory quality (flavor, overall liking)	(Ha et al. 2019)
Aging/freezing	• Beef	• Wet aging	• Wet aging + freezing	• 2 °C, 35 days	• Increased MFI and decrease in moisture loss	(Rehman et al. 2024)
	• Beef	• Wet aging	• Wet aging + freezing	• 2 °C, 56 days	• Increase in desmin degradation	(Setyabrata and Kim 2019)
	• Pork	• Wet aging	• Wet aging + freezing	• 1 °C, 63 days	• Decrease in moisture loss and shear force but increase in lipid/protein oxidation	(Kim et al. 2018)
Microbial inoculation	• Beef	• Dry aging	• Direct adhesion of Mucor flavus, Helicostylum pulchrum, and Penicillium camembertiorum	• 2.9 °C, 90% RH, 26 days	• Increase in VOCs and oleic acid	(Mikami et al. 2022)
	• Beef	• Dry aging	• Mucor flavus	• 1.5 °C, 80–90% RH, 21 days	• Increase in VOCs and sensory quality	(Przybylski et al. 2024)
	• Beef	• Dry aging	• Mucor flavus	• 1.5 °C, 80–90% RH, 28 days	• Increase in pH, proteolysis, and sensory quality	(Przybylski et al. 2023)
	• Beef	• Dry aging	• Mucor flavus	• 1.5 °C, 80–90% RH, 28 days	• Increase in VOCs and sensory quality	(Jaworska et al. 2025)
	• Beef	• Dry aging	• Pilaira anomala, Debaryomyces hansenii	• 0–4 °C, 75% RH, 28 days	• Increase in tenderness, proteolysis, FAA, and FFA	(Oh et al. 2019)
	• Beef	• Dry aging	• Penicillium candidum, P. nalgiovense	• 3 °C, 80% RH, 21 days	• Increase in pH, proteolysis, FAA, nucleotides, and VOCs	(Lee et al. 2021)

RH, relative humidity; SFA, saturated fatty acid; MUFA, monounsaturated fatty acid; VOC, volatile organic compound; FAA, free amino acid; FFA, free fatty acid

Paleolithic era

The Paleolithic era represents the most critical phase in human history with respect to the biological and cultural significance of meat consumption. In this era, hominins lived as hunter-gatherers, seeking food through picking fruits, scavenging dead animals, and hunting small and later large animals (Daujeard and Prat 2022, Eaton 2006, Reshef and Barkai 2015). Scientific evidence, such as structural changes in the skull, teeth, gastrointestinal tracts, and isotope geochemistry analyses of human fossils, demonstrated that the evolution of prehistoric Homo sapiens was accompanied by regular intake of meat in their diet that provided high energy (Domínguez-Rodrigo and Pickering 2017, Leroy et al. 2023, Richards 2002). High intake of energy sources led to the biological evolution of the human body, including encephalization, improved bipedalism and thermoregulation, increased body size, and higher cognitive functions, which all contributed to better survival within the harsh weather conditions represented as multiple cycles of glacial and interglacial periods (Al-Domi 2015, Frassetto et al. 2009, Hockett and Haws 2003).

This evolution was accompanied by the use of stone tools and fire for butchering carcasses and cooking meat (Daujeard and Prat 2022). Hominins were able to hunt larger animals with high-quality proteins and fats by using stone weapons, and struck, ground, or tore the meat with stone tools and cooked it with fire; the meat became easily digestible and tenderized, which required less energy for mastication and deglutition (Daujeard and Prat 2022, Larsen 2003). Thermal treatment further enhanced food safety by eliminating food-borne pathogens.

Meat consumption contributed to the development of a cooperative society (Domínguez-Rodrigo and Pickering 2017). Hunting large game required communication and division of labor among the members (Daujeard and Smith 2025). The social bonds became reinforced by communal hunting, processing of stone tools, and cooking in a fire pit where the community ate meat (Leroy and Praet 2015, Domínguez-Rodrigo and Pickering 2017). It became a center of social interaction; sharing meals in a society minimized individual risk for gathering meat and strengthened reciprocal relationships (Daujeard and Smith 2025).

Early agricultural era

A representative milestone that occurred in the Neolithic era is the agricultural revolution that brought a profound transition in the way of food supply from hunter-gathering to crop cultivation and animal domestication (Richards 2002, Mann 2000, Vigne 2011). The humans settled in the wetland where natural resources were abundant and began to manage the farms and breed the livestock such as cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats (Chiles and Fitzgerald 2018). Due to animal domestication, meat consumption became predictable; however, the amount of meat consumption was regulated as the meaning of meat changed from opportunistic game to long-term investments (Richards 2002, Leroy and Degreef 2015). In return, crops and grains comprised the main portion of the human diet, which led to a significant decrease in overall protein intake (Mann 2000).

Domesticated plants contained higher calories per unit area of land than wild plants; however, the transition from hunting-gathering to a cultivation-based system led to a limited variety of foods and an increased reliance on plant-based energy sources with a decrease in meat consumption (Larsen 2003). Studies revealed that this change in the Neolithic diet significantly influenced the physiological characteristics of human bodies (Alt et al. 2022). The height of humans decreased considerably from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic era, along with their life expectancy (Mann 2018). Archaeological evidence also suggested that maladies such as osteomalacia, dental cavities, malnutrition, and other infectious diseases were prevalent in the early agriculture era, which were highly associated with high-carbohydrate and low-protein diets (Richards 2002, Papathanasiou 2003).

Animals and crop husbandry had led to the formation of a wide community, and the advent of social stratification became evident. The slaughter of livestock was accompanied by special ceremonies, and the sharing and consumption of meat reflected communal identity and hierarchical roles among the members (Leroy and Praet 2015).

Agrarian society to industrialization

In the Middle Ages, from the 5th to 15th centuries, meat consumption became more strongly associated with social hierarchy and religion (Chiles and Fitzgerald 2018). Livestock was the primary source of labor, dairy, wool, and leather; therefore, meat was not frequently consumed by the majority of the people (Mann 2007). After the Black Death swept through Western countries during the 14th century, the landowners reinforced livestock breeding to earn a profit in response to the decreased labor force (Chiles and Fitzgerald 2018). As a result, the development of the rural economy at the end of the Middle Ages was largely promoted by livestock. Still, a majority of people could not consume enough animal-derived proteins except the upper class, indicating that meat consumption reflected the position of social classes (Nungesser and Winter 2021).

The meat supply increased after the Middle Ages owing to scientific, technological, and industrial developments. Better knowledge of forage production, animal husbandry, selective breeding, and land management led to an improvement in livestock productivity. Additionally, the development of mercantilism and urbanization contributed to the growth of markets and facilitated the commercialization of meat (Chiles and Fitzgerald 2018). The productivity of the livestock industry was further enhanced by the Industrial Revolution (Leroy and Degreef 2015). Due to the increase in productivity, population, and supply, meat became a regular part of the diet for people, although access to high-quality meat remained uneven across social classes (Nungesser and Winter 2021, Knapp 1997).

At this time, meat processing shifted from a small-scale craft to science-based technology that could be applied to the industry (Vandendriessche 2008). Improvements in machineries, especially for slaughtering the animals and cutting meat, contributed to the efficiency and consistency of the processed meat manufacturing (Swatland 2010). Processed meat products such as sausages, bacon, barreled meat, and canned meat were the major forms of meat consumption for people, instead of raw pork and beef (Knapp 1997, Tourigny 2018). Consequently, the meat industry became modernized during this period with enhanced productivity, large-scale production, and the commercialization of meat products.

After 20th century

Innovative technologies such as selective breeding, feed formula optimization, and vaccine treatment practice contributed to the dramatic increase in meat production in the 20th century (Chiles and Fitzgerald 2018). Advances in meat packaging, storage, and transportation technologies enabled the development of a global cold-chain system (Swatland 2010). As a result, meat consumption increased significantly, and meat became a daily diet with rising incomes, especially in developed countries (Godfray et al. 2018).

However, there are global issues raised, such as public health, ethical responsibility, and environmental sustainability in relation to meat production (Smet and Hecke 2024, Ederer and Leroy 2023). Studies have shown that excessive meat consumption may increase the rate of chronic diseases due to the accumulation of high calories (Godfray et al. 2018, Mann 2018). The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), one of the agencies of World Health Organization (WHO), reported that the daily intake of red meat or processed meat caused the incidence of cancer, which is still in debate (Hur et al. 2019, International Agency for Research on Cancer 2015). Meanwhile, public awareness of factory farming systems encouraged the shift of consumer preference to the product, which ensured compliance with animal welfare (Godfray et al. 2018, He et al. 2020). In addition, some argue that the conventional livestock industry is the main cause of environmental pollution by greenhouse gas (GHG), and a high amount of grain-based forage production. At the same time, meat alternatives emerged in response to fulfill individual preferences such as vegetarianism, substitute traditional meat production systems, and meet consumer demand for protein sources that rapidly grow (Nungesser and Winter 2021, Hur et al. 2023).

These movements leave us with an important question: what is the definition of meat, and how should it be produced? Therefore, the meat industry is facing societal, scientific, ethical, and ideological challenges. The industry is also asked to overcome critical issues raised in conventional meat production, such as inconsistency in meat quality, limited productivity, rising need for manpower, vulnerability of the livestock to diseases and climate changes, and environmental concerns. These situations have emphasized the necessity of innovative technologies in modern meat production systems that are helpful for increasing meat productivity, rapidly estimating meat quality, and establishing a more efficient production system to ensure food sustainability.

Innovations in conventional meat production

Recent improvements in information & communications technology (ICT), digital technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and animal biotechnologies have greatly changed the operation of livestock production, including rapid quality analyses with predictive modeling, smart livestock farming, genomic editing, climate-resilient production, and sustainable systems (Fig. 1). As previous milestones such as selective breeding, feed optimization, and vaccines did in the past, these new technologies will greatly change the paradigm of meat production systems.

Fig. 1.

Innovative technologies in the livestock industry to increase meat productivity

Imaging and metabolite analyses with modeling

Meat has a complicated structure with many types of components, and is very susceptible to physicochemical changes and microbiological contamination, making it difficult for both consumers and suppliers to evaluate its quality promptly (Sanchez et al. 2022). In this regard, the development of a real-time monitoring system becomes necessary in the meat industry (Antequera et al. 2021, Jia et al. 2022). As non-destructive approaches, spectroscopic and imaging techniques are gaining attention in the fields of meat science due to their simplicity and time-efficient processes (Dixit et al. 2021, Khaled et al. 2021). The former includes near-infrared and Raman spectroscopy, and the latter includes visual imaging capturing red, green, and blue lights (RGB), thermal, and X-ray imaging (Wu et al. 2022). Furthermore, the advance of image processing technology led to the development of hyperspectral imaging (HSI), which collects both spatial and spectral information from the surface of the samples simultaneously and integrates them in real time (Ismail et al. 2025, Silva et al. 2020).

HSI allows the characterization of both external and internal features of the sample reflected by spatial and spectral resolutions, respectively (Sanchez et al. 2022, Jia et al. 2022). Owing to the extensive information in a three-dimensional hypercube, the researchers can obtain the wavelengths from visible regions (400–750 nm) to near-infrared or mid-infrared ranges (780–2500 nm and 2500–25000 nm, respectively) (Shi et al. 2021). Then, the features are extracted and selected to sort out useful information through pre-processing and wavelength selection (Ismail et al. 2023). Following this, the features are used as input variables to develop predictive models based on machine learning or deep learning algorithms, where the AI training process occurs through identifying the relationship between specific patterns from spectral information and actual meat quality and freshness data (Choi et al. 2024, Choi et al. 2026). For developing classification and/or regression modelling, machine learning-based algorithms such as partial least squares regression, support vector machines, and ensemble learning methods, as well as deep learning algorithms like convolutional, artificial, and recurrent neural networks, can be suggested (Shi et al. 2021). These models can be applied after their predictive performance and robustness are validated (Park et al. 2023).

The explainability and interpretability of HSI-based AI models are often derived from the selected features that were obtained from the surface image of the samples. Often, the selected features include the vibration, stretching, or banding of C-H, O-H, and N-H from moisture, amides, lipids, etc., and the molecular change could be reflected in the wavelength intensity that is assessed by HSI measurement (Jia et al. 2022, Jo et al. 2024). Moreover, the increase in the byproduct content that is produced during endogenous and microbial enzyme activity, such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), could be identified by its fluorescence (Antequera et al. 2021). The changes in meat components would be highly related to meat sensory quality and freshness, which may contribute to AI training to develop predictive models. Based on these spectroscopic data, previous studies have reported that the AI-assisted models based on HSI techniques showed improved performances in predicting the selected features such as amino acid contents, lipid oxidation products, volatile basic nitrogen, and textures in beef (Ismail et al. 2025, Park et al. 2023, Kucha et al. 2021). Similarly, sensory attributes of pork, such as saltiness, fatness, and umami taste, were predicted through the combination of HSI and machine learning algorithms (Choi et al. 2026). Additionally, attempts are being made to simplify the application of meat quality prediction using smartphone imaging combined with deep learning models. Hosseinpour et al. (Hosseinpour et al. 2019) introduced an Android application for smartphones to capture beef images and estimate their tenderness. This application was equipped with an artificial neural network model to improve the prediction performance, which suggested the rising accessibility of future imaging techniques to be served from consumers to suppliers to evaluate meat quality.

While spectroscopic and imaging techniques are useful for quick screening of the products, metabolomics can provide more detailed product information. Metabolomics has been widely employed for meat quality characterization and authentication due to its broad applicability and versatility in identifying potential biomarkers (Muroya et al. 2020). Instead of using meat samples directly, recent studies have focused on the utilization of meat exudates as non-invasive approaches to estimate meat quality (Setyabrata et al. 2023, Yu et al. 2021). Due to its characteristic to represent the homogenous metabolomic profiles of meat, many attempts have been made to develop meat freshness prediction models in chicken meat and pork (Kim et al. 2024, Kim et al. 2025). Nucleotide-related metabolites that derive from ATP degradation and amines such as tyramine, which are the breakdown products of amino acids by microbial metabolism, were reported to be correlated with conventional spoilage indicators like pH, volatile basic nitrogen, and total bacterial counts. Additionally, meat exudates contain a variety of metabolites which act as flavor precursors, thereby meat metabolomics could also be used to predict or interpret sensory quality attributes, especially flavor and palatability, of meat products (Muroya et al. 2020).

Technological advances in monitoring systems with simple analyses to quickly identify meat quality will be able to provide high-quality meat to meet consumer demands while greatly reducing the required costs and time to evaluate meat quality, thereby increasing the productivity of meat products. AI-assisted modelling can further increase the accuracy for meat quality prediction, and its performance will be improved further with the advances of AI technologies. However, imaging and/or metabolomic data-based predictive modeling has limitations. First, the industrial applicability is still low due to the high installation costs of the equipment and its complexity (Jo et al. 2024). Especially for imaging technologies, the model system is highly dependent on the training data sets; however, the obtained image data may vary depending on the industrial environment, such as lights, temperature, and humidity. These techniques have limited generalizability across different environmental conditions (Sanchez et al. 2022). Furthermore, the designing of predictive models requires a cumulative dataset of physicochemical meat quality measurements along with imaging or metabolomic analyses to increase the model performance, as well as regular updates of the model systems. However, a massive amount of data increases the computational burden to explore the optimal model algorithm (Shi et al. 2021). To address these challenges, future research should focus on developing cost-effective systems with great robustness. Better approaches for data processing should be investigated. Moreover, the validation of these predictive models under real industrial conditions will be essential to enable practical implementation.

Smart livestock farming

Smart livestock farming refers to the livestock management system by integrating advanced technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), digital sensors and wireless networks, big data analytics, automatic robots, and AI (Dilaver and Dilaver 2024, Javaid et al. 2022, Wolfert et al. 2017). Smart farming systems basically comprise three steps in their process: data acquisition by smart sensing systems, decision-making by AI-assisted models, and execution by the action of autonomous robots (Karunathilake et al. 2023, Idoje et al. 2021). In the case of smart livestock farming, the behavioral and expressional patterns of animals are monitored by sensors and collected in the database, and the environmental factors in the farm, such as temperature and humidity, are automatically controlled by algorithms to provide optimal conditions to the animals (Gonçalves et al. 2022, Mohamed et al. 2021).

Smart livestock farming requires the implementation of machine learning or deep learning algorithms to perform with high accuracy (Akkem et al. 2023). These algorithms find specific patterns in the unstructured big data and determine the optimal outputs (Idoje et al. 2021). It was reported that smart livestock farming enabled farmers to assess the health condition of animals, the degree of welfare the animals felt, and the estimated productivity of the livestock (Dilaver and Dilaver 2024). In the study conducted by Meng et al. (Meng et al. 2023), known and newly introduced Hanwoo cattle were successfully identified by the combined systems comprised of a network of closed-circuit televisions and deep learning algorithms to increase the performance of classification models. Siddique et al. (Siddique et al. 2025) found that big data collection combined with a convolutional neural network model-based classification model was effective in identifying anemia in small ruminants and optimizing parasite management strategies. Precision feeding is another area of smart livestock farming. Precision feeding is based on the optimal amount of feed for an individual animal to precisely fit the nutrient requirement (Seo 2025). It helps manage the farm more economically while preventing the overweight of the animals.

In response to the decrease in rural populations and labor shortages, the increasing need for more industrial, automated, and large-scale facilities for livestock production, as well as demand for animal welfare, smart livestock farming may be an effective solution to increase livestock productivity (Shin et al. 2025). However, there are limitations in the field due to the huge amount of costs for facility investment and insufficient performance of the equipment to be commercialized. Moreover, the economic feasibility of smart livestock farming should be investigated in depth to fully understand the benefits of investing in the system. Apart from the economic point of view, the complexity of animal behavior patterns necessitates further improvements in the sensitivity of sensor technology and AI training (Dilaver and Dilaver 2024). However, the scarcity of high-quality open-source data set for the appearance or behavior of livestock makes it difficult for industrial application (Meng et al. 2023). Moreover, AI technology is helpful for decision making, nonetheless, the maintenance of AI model is not easy because it requires a large data set and the management, integration, and interpretation of big data (Karunathilake et al. 2023). Due to the abovementioned challenges, the establishment of a smart livestock farming system in a small-scale farm would be difficult; Javaid et al. (Javaid et al. 2022) suggested official assistance to expand network coverage and secure connectivity in rural and isolated communities. The accumulation of valuable digital data sources is equally important to develop a widely applicable smart livestock farming system.

Meat aging techniques

Aging refers to storing meat for a certain period to improve eating quality through postmortem energy metabolism, proteolysis, and apoptosis (Lee et al. 2021). Aging is particularly effective in increasing tenderness, which is determined by three main factors: background toughness, sarcomere contraction, and myofibrillar degradation (Razminowicz et al. 2008). After slaughter, as ATP is depleted, inextensible actomyosin forms, and the carcass enters rigor mortis, during which muscle fibers contract (Lee et al. 2021). However, these myofibrillar structures and cytoskeletal proteins are broken down by successive endogenous enzymatic reactions such as calpains and cathepsins, consequently leading to the improvement in meat tenderness (Joo et al. 2023).

Aging can also be effective for meat flavor development. Flavor is comprised of taste and aroma, and these attributes are determined by flavor precursors and compounds, including amino acids, nucleotides, sugars, lipids, volatile aroma compounds, and so on (Lee et al. 2023). Endogenous enzyme activity produces and accumulates these flavor precursors and compounds in the meat (Oh et al. 2019). The flavor of aged meat is largely affected by how it is aged. In general, there are two ways of meat aging: wet and dry aging. The meat is vacuum-packaged during the wet aging process, whereas it is exposed to the air without any packaging materials during dry aging process (Kim et al. 2017). The benefit of wet aging is its simple and safe procedure, thus can be easily applied in the conventional meat industry. On the other hand, dry aging requires a strict management in the environmental conditions, such as temperature, humidity, air flow, and microbial communities within the aging room (Lee et al. 2021). The effects of these environmental conditions have been investigated by numerous studies (Kim et al. 2018, Lee et al. 2019, Ribeiro et al. 2024). The major findings were that the moisture evaporation had an effect of condensing flavor precursors in the early phase of dry aging; then, microbial metabolism further generates flavor compounds through proteolysis and lipolysis (Kim et al. 2018, Lee et al. 2019, Ribeiro et al. 2024, Lee et al. 2019). The degree of moisture evaporation, microbial composition, and metabolism vary depending on the environmental conditions.

While aging processes are widely used in the industry, conventional meat aging techniques have limitations that take a long period to improve meat quality, thus requiring a high cost, especially for dry aging. Therefore, recently, novel approaches have been applied to maximize the effect of aging on the tenderization and flavor development of meat in a shorter time. Kim et al. (Kim et al. 2017) proposed a stepwise aging, which combines two aging methods by conducting dry/wet aging first and then continuing the other type of aging method. This aging technique benefits the meat industry because it can significantly reduce the dry aging period, which requires strict quality control of meat. Another approach is dry aging of meat with microbial inoculation to boost microbial metabolism during aging period. The microbes used for dry aging include Penicillium spp., Debaryomyces hansenii, Mucor flavus, etc. (Oh et al. 2019, Lee et al. 2022, Przybylski et al. 2023). In the previous studies, these microbes were inoculated by pouring, rubbing, or spraying on the meat surface (Lee et al. 2022, Przybylski et al. 2023, Mikami et al. 2022). The results showed that the amount of flavor compounds increased significantly by microbial inoculation, which led to the enhancement of the sensory quality of dry-aged beef as assessed by sensory analysis.

Genomic technologies

Modern genomic technologies based on zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), clustered regulatory interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 system, and base editing demonstrated their high efficiency and accuracy in gene modification (Sunwasiya and Mondal 2024). These gene editing techniques provide a rapid genetic variation that leads to the advent of new phenotypes in a much shorter intergenerational interval, which are beneficial for disease resistance, improved traits for meat production, and animal welfare in the livestock industry compared to traditional breeding that requires a long time (Raza et al. 2022, Yunes et al. 2021).

Avian influenza and leukemia in poultry, African swine fever and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) in pigs, mastitis, bovine tuberculosis, and foot-and-mouth disease in cattle are considered major diseases in the industry (Liu et al. 2022, Wang et al. 2025). Although traditional precautions are being applied, such as vaccination and the use of antibiotics, these approaches raised public concerns about food safety as well as antimicrobial resistance and environmental pollution. Genomic technologies focus on genetic improvement of innate immunity and disease resistance, as the susceptibility to specific diseases is strongly influenced by genetic factors (Eenennaam 2019). It was reported the effectiveness of CRISPR/Cas9 on the generation of disease-resistant animals, including avian leukosis virus–resistant chickens, PRRS virus-resistant pigs, and mycobacterium-resistant cattle (Park 2023, Tu et al. 2022, Wang et al. 2022).

Beyond disease resistance, genomic technologies can be applied to improve the productivity of livestock, including muscle growth, thermotolerance, reproductive efficiency, and meat quality (Wang et al. 2025, Choi et al. 2025). Recent literature reported that knock-out of myostatin (MSTN), a negative regulator of skeletal muscle growth, led to improved growth performance as well as meat quality, including pH, shear force, and intramuscular fat content (Liu et al. 2022, Dilger et al. 2022, Luo et al. 2024). The insertion of the heat-tolerance gene SLICK from Senepol cattle into the genome of Holstein cattle showed increased thermoregulatory ability (Yunes et al. 2021). Other genes of interest are insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2), responsible for cell proliferation and differentiation, myogenic differentiation 1 (MyoD1) for cell differentiation, and fat-1 genes for the transition of n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids to n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (Liu et al. 2022). Many researchers are identifying the effectiveness of multiple gene editing, such as IGF2, MSTN, CD163, and others in a cellular scale. The major findings include increased muscle content and faster growth rates of gene-edited porcine fibroblasts (Ren et al. 2024).

Despite its potential in the livestock industry, genomic technologies face societal and ethical challenges, especially obtaining approval for commercial use and public acceptance of the product (Yunes et al. 2021). The government regulations are inconsistent across countries, and consumers are skeptical of genetically modified organisms. However, the fast-growing salmon and the PRRS-free pig had been approved by certain countries (FDA , Osmond and Colombo 2019). Consequently, the safety of livestock produced from genomic technologies should be further confirmed and broadly disseminated. Additionally, attention should be paid to the off-target variation of genetically modified animals, which may negatively influence animal health, growth, reproduction, or induce food allergenicity to consumers (Liu et al. 2022). Therefore, it is required to increase the precision of the target gene and the efficacy of successful edits of the animals (Dilger et al. 2022). In response to these issues, current research is shifting from double-stranded break-mediated editing to more refined platforms like base and prime editors. By employing single-stranded breaks, these novel systems offer a safer alternative that significantly reduces the risk of off-target mutations and adverse cellular responses (Wang et al. 2025).

Climate-resilient production and sustainable system

Livestock production and climate cannot be separated from each other. The animals are largely influenced by climate change, such as rising temperatures and humidity, and increased frequency of extreme weather, which directly impairs thermoregulation, metabolism, immune systems, and growth performance of the animals, and indirectly leads to decreased crop yields, forage digestibility, and water availability (Cheng et al. 2022, Chisoro et al. 2023, Escarcha et al. 2018). On the other hand, forests are destroyed to produce pasture, and approximately 14–21% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions derive from livestock industries, primarily through methane, carbon dioxide, and nitric oxide by enteric fermentation and manure management (Solomon et al. 2023, Munidasa et al. 2025). Therefore, both climate-resilient production and sustainable systems are vital in livestock industries to achieve adaptation to climate change and mitigation of GHG emissions.

Main strategies for climate-resilient production include restructuring animal farms, novel management technologies, adjustment of diet composition and feeding regimes, and the use of genetics or selective breeding (Cheng et al. 2022). The installation of shade infrastructure and irrigation systems can help animals save extra energy for thermoregulation (Escarcha et al. 2018). Combined with smart livestock farming, its effect can be further enhanced to alleviate the heat stress of the animals by automatically modulating the environmental conditions based on the behavioral data (e.g., reduced feed intake and increased water intake) collected from digital sensors. Changing feeding regimes to cooler moments of the day with electrolytes and heat-tolerant forages in the diet were shown to be effective in reducing the metabolic heat of the ruminants (Nsabiyeze et al. 2025). Heat-tolerant traits of the animals can be obtained through selective breeding or genomic technology.

Additionally, there are efforts to mitigate GHG emissions through dietary manipulation, manure management, and genomic technologies (Henry et al. 2012). Especially, dietary manipulation can contribute to fostering a sustainable circular system by replacing conventional feed with low-grade feed through the upcycling of food wastes, by-products, and insect-based proteins, which helps decrease global feed demand and alleviate food-feed competition (Dou et al. 2022, Gatto et al. 2024, Jagtap et al. 2021, Selvan et al. 2023). Another approach includes the supplementation of antibiotics, dietary oils, and phytochemicals that are reported to be effective in decreasing enteric methane emissions (Munidasa et al. 2025, Lewis et al. 2015). Also, enhanced digestibility of feed can decrease methane emission from ruminants (Cheng et al. 2022).

While many attentions had been paid to ruminants in terms; however, there is limited research on non-ruminants, such as chickens and pigs in terms of adaptation and mitigation to climate change (Cheng et al. 2022). As the annual consumption of meat from non-ruminants is comparable or higher than that from ruminants in many countries, therefore, the research gap between ruminants and non-ruminants should be covered in the future. Furthermore, it is critical that the scalability and economic feasibility of these systems in the industry are yet to be fully estimated, thereby their industrial application would be challenging, requiring further studies on how these strategies could be applied universally. Finally, as these techniques require a high cost, small-scale farmers face challenges in adopting climate-resilient production and sustainable systems. In this regard, an alternative strategy can be adopted by small-scale farmers to switch livestock species from climate-sensitive species (e.g., pigs, sheep, and broilers) to heat- and water-tolerant species such as goats and donkeys under changing climate conditions (Taruvinga et al. 2013). According to the authors, diversification of the climate-resilient species would be effective in responding to various climate factors. However, since this approach would not be fundamental for climate change, more substantial solutions should be explored in further studies.

Cellular and hybrid approaches for meat alternatives

Innovative technologies have greatly contributed to improving meat productivity and sensory quality. Nonetheless, the meat industry still faces remaining questions to address: environmental sustainability, the relationship between meat consumption and healthiness, diversified consumer preference, religious and ideological issues, etc. (Kouarfaté and Durif 2023). To overcome these issues and fulfill the rising demand for protein sources, attempts were made to develop non-animal-based meat alternatives in the market (Dijk et al. 2023, Hocquette 2016). Non-animal-based protein sources include plant-based meat alternatives (PBMA), microorganism-based proteins, and edible insects (He et al. 2020, Lee et al. 2023). However, these alternative protein sources have limitations, respectively. For example, PBMA uses plant-derived proteins such as soy, pea, wheat, and gluten, and imitates the fibrous structure of animal muscle tissues by aligning plant proteins and aggregating them through texturizing processes like high-moisture extrusion, shear cell, wet spinning, or electrospinning, showing meat-like texture (He et al. 2020, Zhang et al. 2021). Nonetheless, other physicochemical and sensory characteristics of PBMA remained different from those of conventional meat, and unpleasant flavors such as strong beany flavor, metallic, and bitter tastes are the main hurdle for PBMA to be consistently consumed (Kaplan and McClements 2025).

In this context, cellular agriculture has garnered public attention due to its transformative innovation in producing agricultural products and by-products without the need for crop cultivation or animal slaughter (Lee et al. 2023). The traditional agriculture, which is defined as the science, art, or practice of cultivating the soil, producing crops, and raising livestock and in varying degrees the preparation and marketing of the resulting products, including, but not limited to, food, medicine, wood, and clothes. In contrast, the future cellular agriculture focuses on the production of agricultural products directly by cultivating animal/plant cells or microorganisms using a combination of biotechnology, tissue engineering, molecular biology, and synthetic biology to create and design new methods of producing bioresources that would come from traditional agriculture (Choi et al. 2021). Currently, cell-based food, one of the emerging fields in cellular agriculture, has become a worldwide sensation, and it is believed that the commercialization of cell-based food would be the starting point of the upcoming era of cellular agriculture in our future food system (Broad and Biltekoff 2023).

A basic process of manufacturing cell-based foods includes cell culture, tissue engineering, and large-scale production steps (Kim et al. 2024). The cells proliferate, differentiate, and align to constitute edible tissues likely with higher similarity to conventional meat structure than PBMA. Two main approaches exist in cell cultivation, one of which is the cultivation of animal cells and the other is precision fermentation using microbial hosts (Maseko et al. 2025, Rønning et al. 2024). Additionally, the cellular components from multiple protein sources could be combined as a form of hybrid type cell-based food (HCBF).

Cell-based food

Cell-based food involves the direct production of animal muscle, fat, and connective tissues through in vitro cell culture (Goodwin and Shoulders 2013, Post et al. 2020). Unlike PBMA and edible insects, which often possess undesirable sensory attributes, cell-based food offers more conventional meat-like flavor, texture, and nutritional composition (Jahir et al. 2023). As it grows from animal-derived cells, cell-based food may provide greater psychological acceptance than other non-animal-based meat alternatives among consumers (Alam et al. 2024).

Key events in the field of cell-based food production are well summarized by Hwang et al., Singh et al., and Zhang et al. (Zhang et al. 2021, Hwang et al. 2025, Singh et al. 2026). The cell-based food industry reached its first major milestone in 2013, when Mark J. Post from Maastricht University in the Netherlands unveiled a 100-g beef patty to the public. At that time, the production cost reached approximately $330,000 due to the early stage of research and laboratory-scale production. Four years later, the cost for a 5-oz cell-based patty had dramatically decreased to $11.36. In 2021, the first factory dedicated to cell-based food manufacture was established in Israel. As the technology advanced, many countries began examining safety, ethical issues, and policies related to the classification and commercialization of cell-based food products. Singapore became the first country to approve commercial cell-based food products for commercial sale in 2020. The USA followed with approval of cell-based food products in 2023, while Israel and Hong Kong granted approval in 2024. Most recently, in 2025, Mission Barns and Wildtype received the first approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the commercialization of cell-based fat and seafood (salmon), respectively.

The process of cell-based food production starts with cell isolation from donor animals (Zhang et al. 2021, Choi et al. 2021). The cells of interest may include pluripotent stem cells, muscle satellite cells, mesenchymal stem cells, fibroblasts, or adipogenic stem cells, depending on the purpose of cell cultivation (Kim et al. 2024, Giglio et al. 2024). The harvested cells are cultivated in a nutrient-rich medium to establish a stabilized cell line (Jahir et al. 2023). Then, the cells are proliferated in an adequate culture medium or into a bioreactor for large-scale production under optimized conditions, and then differentiated into muscle fibers, adipocytes, or connective tissues based on the origin of the cell line (Jung et al. 2025). Incorporation of cells with scaffolds provides structural support for cell attachment, alignment, and maturation, which is necessary to maintain the form of cell-based food to be consumed (Kim et al. 2024).

Current cell-based food research focuses on the (1) enhancement in rapid proliferation and long-term culture of cells, (2) establishment of sustainable system for cell-based food production including the development of serum-free media and its verification for cell cultivation which enables to reduce the production cost and address ethical issues regarding the use of fetal bovine serum, and (3) exploration on novel, edible, and biodegradable scaffold materials, etc. (Giglio et al. 2024, Jung et al. 2025, Kirsch et al. 2023). Other research area includes improvement in tissue engineering and bioprinting for the production of cell-based food (Jung et al. 2026, Lee et al. 2026, Zagury et al. 2022).

Additionally, in terms of commercialization of cell-based food, the production cost, scalability, and environmental impact should be further assessed. The cost has been gradually reduced from $250,000 for 142 g of artificial hamburger in 2013 to less than $1,190 per kg of chicken patty (Kim et al. 2024, Kirsch et al. 2023). However, production cost still plays a crucial role in large-scale manufacturing. A high cost for cell-based food production is attributed to the culture media, especially when it contains rich amount of growth factors and nutrients such as amino acids, vitamins, and minerals (Kim et al. 2024). The rate of proliferation and differentiation also determines the cost-effectiveness of cell-based food production (Jung et al. 2025). Finally, operating bioreactors in a mass production requires a lot of money for installation and maintenance (Giglio et al. 2024). Therefore, for the commercialization of cell-based food, its price should be reduced by further studies involving serum-free media strategies to improve the proliferation and differentiation efficiency of cells, and increase the scalability of cell-based food in a bioreactor such as maintaining its stability and efficiency.

For large-scale manufacturing with bioreactors, several issues should be addressed. It was reported that the proliferation process doubles the 50 population over 7–8 weeks, and continues to grow until trillions of cells are produced in a bioreactor (Ismail et al. 2020). As cell density rapidly increases in a bioreactor, how to maintain the supply of oxygen and essential nutrients for high-density cultivated cells largely determines the efficiency of large-scale production (Giglio et al. 2024). Therefore, novel strategies such as developing vascularization system to transport oxygen and nutrients in thick, dense and structured tissues, using edible scaffolds and microcarriers for cells to adhere and grow in a 3D environment are necessary, as well as cost-effective designing and production of bioreactors (Post et al. 2020, Jahir et al. 2023, Giglio et al. 2024).

Finally, cell-based food production is believed to possess environmental benefits, such as less greenhouse gas emission, reduced land, energy, and water use (Post et al. 2020, Kirsch et al. 2023). However, these points are not fully demonstrated in an industrial scale, which necessitates a long-term life-cycle assessment. Additionally, some consumers are not convinced about the benefit of cell-based food for animal-welfare due to the use of animal-derived media such as fetal bovine serum (Kim et al. 2024). Further investigation on the effectiveness of cell-based food production on reducing environmental burden should be conducted.

Precision fermentation

Precision fermentation refers to producing specific components through microbial fermentation of microorganisms such as fungi and yeast (Knychala et al. 2024). By inserting genes of interest into the microbial hosts, the gene expression and the following synthesis of protein are functionally identical to conventional meat (Maseko et al. 2025). Therefore, compared to traditional fermentation, it enables the systematic and efficient synthesis of proteins like heme proteins, structural proteins, and enzymes, as well as lipids, flavorings, and colorings (Knychala et al. 2024, Webb et al. 2021).

Precision fermentation occurs in a bioreactor under optimized conditions, resulting in consistent, reproducible, and effective synthesis of the required components, which can contribute to the enhancement of meat-like color, flavor, nutrition, or functionality of the final product (Maseko et al. 2025, Dupuis et al. 2023). However, as precision fermentation is beneficial for producing individual compounds rather than a complete form of meat structure, the combination of other protein sources as additives is more efficient. Despite attempts to apply plant-cultured cells for producing ingredients for additives, microbial fermentation is more desirable than plant-cultured cells for now because these plant cells are bigger and grows slower than microorganisms, taking more time for fermentation and reducing the process efficiency (Webb et al. 2021).

Hybrid type cell-based food

The definition of HCBF is a meat product blended with animal, plant, and/or microbial fermentation-based components either from natural origins or cultivated cells, which is highly similar to conventional meat (Dijk et al. 2023, Grasso 2024). Manufacturing of meat alternatives from multiple protein sources has benefits in addressing the technological limitations that meat alternatives made with a sole protein source exhibited, such as physicochemical and nutritional similarity, enhanced organoleptic properties, technological feasibility, and cost-effectiveness (Alam et al. 2024).

A main feature of HCBF is its compositional flexibility (Kaplan and McClements 2025). The composition of protein sources in HCBF products can vary depending on the desired characteristics. It was reported that plant-based proteins were included in most of the HCBF products, ranging from 20 to 50%, owing to the advantages of plant-derived scaffolds such as biocompatibility, structural flexibility, and biodegradability (Webb et al. 2021, Gordon et al. 2025). The nutritional and functional properties of HCBF can be further enhanced by using mycelium-based components, which possess an abundant amount of dietary fibers, phenolic compounds, and minerals with great antioxidant capacity (Kaplan and McClements 2025, Maseko et al. 2025). The lack of meat-like flavor, texture, and other physicochemical attributes could be compensated for with animal-derived protein sources to mitigate the gap between conventional meat. Consequently, the quality of HCBF could be enhanced by optimizing the formulation of various protein sources.

Challenges of cell-based foods in mitigating meat quality attributes

Tenderness, flavor, and juiciness are three key factors among intrinsic meat quality attributes that critically determine consumer preference (Aaslyng and Meinert 2017). Therefore, one of the main objectives of the researches on cell-based foods is to improve meat-like eating quality. However, simulating the eating quality of conventional meat is not easy due to its complex muscle fiber structure and chemical composition of flavor precursors/compounds. As a result, reproducing key meat quality attributes is a significant challenge for cell-based foods.

The texture of meat comes from the organization and alignment of muscle fibers, connective tissues, the distribution of fat and extracellular matrix, along with postmortem biochemical processes (Broucke et al. 2023). However, cell-based food often shows less dense fibrous structures and marbling. Alternatively, recent studies have focused on the choice of scaffold materials, which strongly influence the mechanical characteristics of cell-based food (Alam et al. 2024, Kirsch et al. 2023). Therefore, many studies have been conducted using various scaffold materials to imitate meat texture, especially with edible biomaterials (Jung et al. 2025, Foley and Floreani 2025, Chiu et al. 2025). Also, a weak texture can be strengthened to be similar to conventional meat through tissue engineering or 3D bioprinting.

Flavor is composed of taste and aroma, and these attributes are determined by the content and composition of flavor-contributing compounds and their reactions. For example, in meat, the Maillard reaction between reducing sugars and amino acids, lipid oxidation, interaction between the products generated from the two aforementioned reactions, and thiamin degradation mainly comprise meat flavor (Lee et al. 2024). Nonetheless, current technologies for cell-based food cannot fully replicate the profiles of flavor-contributing compounds existing in conventional meat products. Therefore, research on mimicking meat-like flavor focuses on the generation of flavor-contributing compounds, especially free amino acids, through optimization of cell proliferation/differentiation or media supplementation (Kim et al. 2023, Sugama et al. 2025, Kim et al. 2024).

As mentioned earlier, aging can significantly enhance meat quality. On the other hand, cell-based foods do not undergo the same postmortem metabolism that occurs in animal muscle tissues, and therefore, lack the natural aging process observed in conventional meat. Recently, Furuhashi and Takeuchi (Furuhashi and Takeuchi 2025) assessed whether aging can be applied to increase the sensory attributes of cell-based food. The authors reported that free amino acids in bovine muscle cells decreased during differentiation; however, they then increased significantly by aging process at 4℃ for 14 days. It indicates that aging would affect the flavor development of cell-based food by enriching flavor precursors such as free amino acids. Nonetheless, there is limited research on the effect of aging on cell-based food, therefore, further investigations should be conducted on how the quality of cell-based food changes during aging processes. Co-culture system including muscle and adipocytes is another approach to incorporate flavor precursors, lipids, into cell-based foods (Elhaddad et al. 2025). Additionally, it can also simulate meat-like marbling, which affects not only the rheological characteristics but also the visual appearance of the products.

Other quality attributes of cell-based food, such as color and nutrition, are also actively investigated to overcome its limitations through novel approaches, which are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3.

Quality traits and research trends to overcome the quality limitations of cell-based food

Trait	Current status and limitations	Research trends	References
Color	• Low myoglobin content by suppressed gene expression at ambient oxygen conditions	• Oxygen and/or temperature conditioning	(Alam et al. 2025)
		• Supplement of heme protein, iron, or additives	(Ben-Arye et al. 2020)
Flavor	• Low flavor compound contents	• Flavor precursor supplement	(Lee et al. 2024)
		• Post-harvest storage (aging) to produce FAA	(Furuhashi and Takeuchi 2025)
		• Optimization of adipocyte differentiation	(Lim et al. 2024)
		• Co-culture of adipocytes	(Elhaddad et al. 2025)
Texture	• Weak texture • Difficulty in producing full-size meat products due to the limited diffusion of nutrients and oxygen	• Tissue engineering or 3D bioprinting	(Liu et al. 2024)
		• Scaffolds to support cell attachment and alignment	(Meng et al. 2025)
		• Co-culture of adipocytes and fibroblasts	(Nie et al. 2025)
Juiciness	• Low WHC	• Binders to increase crosslinks and WHC	(Park et al. 2025)
		• Cell hybridization to increase WHC	(Sakai et al. 2021)
Nutrition	• Similar amino acid composition	• Scaffold materials with high nutritional value	(Simsa et al. 2019)
	• Different fatty acid composition	• Tissue assembly or cell hybridization	(Wang et al. 2024)

FAA, free amino acids; WHC, water-holding capacity

Regulatory policy and social perception

Cell-based food has brought a new paradigm to the food system. Due to clear differences from both conventional meat and meat alternatives, regulatory frameworks for these novel food technologies should be established prior to their commercialization (Kołodziejczak et al. 2021, Jahir et al. 2023). Key regulatory considerations include establishing criteria to classify cell-based food, labelling the product to provide information to consumers, and evaluating food safety (Sun et al. 2021).

Classification of cell-based food largely determines the overall decision-making processes. A main issue is that cell-based food does not fit within existing food categories. Conventional meat comes from the muscle tissue of the slaughtered livestock; however, cell-based food starts from cell cultivation. Questions raised in the definition of meat reflect an uncertain identity of cell-based food (Kirsch et al. 2023). This, in turn, asks how to label the products (Kim et al. 2024). Whether cell-based food could be labeled as “meat” or not has significant implications, which greatly influence consumer perception and willingness to purchase. Labeling also includes origin of the cell lines, safety, ethical issues, and so on, which will affect the psychological, legal, and commercial aspects of the products (Lee et al. 2023).

To be acknowledged as edible, cell-based food must convince consumers of its safety to eat (Choi et al. 2021). This, however, raises questions that extend beyond traditional food safety concerns (Knychala et al. 2024). Considering the process of cell-based food manufacturing, establishing the standards for cellular and genetic examination, as well as conventional food assessment including physicochemical and microbiological assays, will be necessary (Gordon et al. 2025). All components, such as cell lines, culture media composition, and scaffold materials, should be inspected for potential hazards (Lee et al. 2023). Furthermore, risk assessments for the occasion of cell contamination, genetic stability, and unexpected biological modifications should be executed. Supply chain transparency and traceability of the products may be required to guarantee product safety. Addressing compliance with the regulation will be essential for achieving commercial approval as well as acknowledgement from consumers.

Consumer perception and acceptance largely determine the commercial success of cell-based food (Gordon et al. 2025). Results from consumer surveys indicated that the positive aspects of meat alternatives were sustainable food production, meat products generated away from factory farming systems, food security, etc. (Hocquette 2016, Post et al. 2020, Arora et al. 2023). However, the preference for cell-based food varied considerably by personal experiences and politics, or geographical and cultural context (Goodwin and Shoulders 2013, Zhang et al. 2021). It was shown that providing scientific information with safety assurance was effective in alleviating food neophobia against cell-based food (Rolland et al. 2020, Song et al. 2022).

On the other hand, limitations such as unnaturalness, concerns about food safety and health, sensory characteristics, and price were the main reasons for consumers who exhibited negative attitudes to the products (Zhang et al. 2021). Cell-based food have an image of being artificially processed, which may not correspond to the public tendency to prefer natural, organic, and healthy foods (Dijk et al. 2023). Although recent advances in cellular agriculture and food processing contribute to the increase in similarity of cell-based food to conventional meat, stereotypes or the unfamiliar sensory attributes of the product could lead consumers to perceive it as unnatural (Jahir et al. 2023). Concerns about the safety of cell-based food also matter in the market, especially for consumers with low awareness or misunderstanding of the cell culture process and accompanying reagents (Kirsch et al. 2023). It is therefore highly required to verify the safety of the products to convince consumers (Kim et al. 2024). The most significant barriers to public acceptance of cell-based food are their inferior sensory quality and high price (Gordon et al. 2025). Plant-based meat alternatives elicit a strong beany flavor with bitter, astringent, and metallic tastes, which negatively affect consumer preference (Arora et al. 2023). Several studies have reported that cell-based food exhibited better flavor characteristics than plant-based meat alternatives; nonetheless, there is a big gap between the flavor of conventional meat and that of cell-based food, described as having weak and simple flavor attributes (Lee et al. 2023). Therefore, to make the product have more flavor complexity, scientists are attempting the co-culture of animal muscle and fat tissues, modifying fatty acid composition, adding flavor precursors, and so on (Jung et al. 2026, Lee et al. 2026, Elhaddad et al. 2025). Despite these efforts, recent surveys showed that consumers generally anticipated that the price of cell-based food would be lower than conventional meat, suggesting that price competitiveness should be guaranteed in the market (Kim et al. 2024). As consumer willingness to repurchase meat is highly associated with sensorial appeal and cost-effectiveness (Liu et al. 2022), future studies should focus on better imitating the sensory attributes of cell-based food to real meat while reducing the overall cost to produce it.

Nevertheless, researchers consider cellular agriculture important as well as traditional agriculture in terms of supplying future protein sources, as each protein source, i.e., conventional meat, non-animal-based meat alternative, and cell-based food, possesses both advantages and limitations. Conventional meat products exhibit sensory richness, high nutritional value, and cultural familiarity; however, traditional livestock systems must address issues raised as mentioned above, such as public health, ethical responsibility, and environmental sustainability. Non-animal-based meat alternatives have benefits on cost- and resource-efficiency, scalability, and ethical issues; nonetheless, consumer acceptance for their sensory quality is still low (Webb et al. 2021, Arora et al. 2023). On the other hand, cell-based food has a higher potential than PBMA in terms of sensory similarity to conventional meat. By integrating biotechnology, tissue engineering, molecular biology, and synthetic biology, its protein-fat composition and nutritional profile can be designed, altered, and diversified, which may be applied for specific nutritional or functional products such as nutrient-fortified and low-fat diets or customized texture for the elderly. Additionally, cellular agriculture has the potential for sustainable production of agricultural products in the future, due to its ability to manufacturing the basic requisites, including food, clothes, and medicines, in a closed environment regardless of the region by using cells as the seed source (Stephens et al. 2018). Still, however, further improvements in cell-based food technology are highly required to improve its overall quality and become commercialized worldwide. Consequently, a variety of meat alternatives, including non-animal-derived meat alternatives and cell-based food, will make a complementary relationship with conventional meat, rather than replacing one another, to overcome the current challenges that we face (Fig. 2). The era of cellular agriculture will begin, along with conventional meat which will still be favored by consumers for its sensorial and cultural familiarity, nutritional and flavor richness, and high-quality value.

Fig. 2.

A future prospective food system on protein sources

Conclusion and future perspectives

This review provided the positions and significance of meat production and/or consumption from historical, socio-cultural, industrial, or technological perspectives, as well as the emergence of cellular agriculture. It was evident that meat had played a fundamental role in the biological evolution of humans, and further influenced the social and cultural identity from the past to the present. Now, the rapid increase in global population and the following demand for proteins forces the livestock industry to lead innovations in meat production—such as AI-based real-time quality prediction, smart farming systems, genomic technologies, and climate-resilient production strategies—which significantly improved the productivity, efficiency, and sustainability of meat products. Along with this innovative meat production, research on meat alternatives, such as PBMA and cell-based food, has been conducted in many countries. In particular, cell-based food has been suggested as a complementary approach to meet consumer demand in the future. While meat demands rise significantly worldwide, meat production is facing challenges in terms of environmental and ethical perspectives, whereas research on cell-based food is ongoing to overcome its limitations on nutritional and sensory attributes, cost-ineffectiveness, etc.

It is unlikely that either conventional meat or cell-based food exist alone in the future food system; rather, they are expected to converge into a mixed-model food landscape, complementing each other’s strengths and limitations. Conventional meat will continue to play a critical role due to its sensory attributes, nutritional value, socio-economic, and cultural significances. At the same time, cell-based food has the potential to complement and diversify protein sources, thereby reducing the pressure on natural resources, while meeting evolving consumer demands. As technological innovation advances and new meat alternatives emerge, the role of meat in the future food system may gradually shift from being the sole dominant protein source to becoming a key contributor to food sustainability and security. In this context, a deep understanding of animal-origin foods, along with the associated science and technology, remains essential for shaping a resilient and sustainable future food system. Continued innovation will enhance meat quality, sustainability, and system resilience, and the future of meat will ultimately depend on how thoughtfully and responsively we innovate its production. The introduction of cell-based foods into the marketplace signals an expansion of the meat science landscape, offering new opportunities for innovation alongside conventional meat production.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: Lee D, Jo C. Funding acquisition: Jo C. Project administration: Jo C. Investigation: Lee D. Supervision: Jo C. Writing – original draft: Lee D, Jo C. Writing – review & editing: Lee D, Jo C.

Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethical approval

This article does not require IRB/IACUC approval because there are no human and animal participants.