In the context of sustainable agriculture, there is a need for new knowledge
in order to develop animal farming systems that respond to the new and diversified
consumers’ demand. It concerns the production of safe high-quality meat products
while respecting animal health and welfare, and protecting the environment. Intrinsic
quality attributes of beef, and especially tenderness, depend on one hand on post mortem
factors associated with ageing and cooking, and on the other on muscle characteristics
of live animals, which themselves depend on gene expression. Expression levels of
these genes as well as interaction between them can now be assessed thanks to the
development of functional genomics (e.g. DNA microarrays and proteomic tools)