mEATquality: a project to promote sustainable pork and broiler meat production

The mEATquality project aims to provide consumers with sustainably produced pork and broiler meat, by developingnovel solutions that address societal demands, environmental concerns and economic needs on farm and in the chain.The ‘extensiveness’ of production is a key issue, and will be developed in a stepwise approach. The first step surveysextensive husbandry factors in relation to intrinsic meat quality, through data collection on conventional, free-rangeand organic farms, and through consumer expectation studies. The second will include controlled experiments onfarmto investigate intrinsic meat quality characteristics in relation to husbandry factors: genetics, forage, space andenrichment. It will also develop innovative techniques for automated meat quality assessment at high line speeds,and combat food fraud through authentication of the final product via ‘fingerprinting techniques’ and blockchaintechnology. The third step will check the novel farming practices against sustainability aspects: animal welfare,environmental impact and economic viability. Market acceptance of the new products and ways to communicate themto consumers will be studied. The fourth and final step will communicate and disseminate the results. Key outputs are an‘Extensive Practices’ app, animated movies and EIP Practice Abstracts for farmers, educational tutorials for consumers,retailers and restaurants, and an EU Meat Database for authentication purposes. mEATquality is proposed and codesignedby organic sector representatives Ecovalia and Naturland, in collaboration with CLITRAVI, the LiaisonCentre for the Meat Processing Industry in the European Union. They joined forces with academic partners (including5 of Europe’s leading meat quality laboratories), Marel (poultry, fish, meat & further processing equipment), retailerCarrefour S.A. and poultry breeder Hubbard. Finally, Plukon Food Group supports the project in-kind. Collectivelythese partners span the chain from Farm to Fork.