The increasing population of the world needs nutritious protein.
Affluence will increase, and although eating habits and preferences are
very different between regions, as an industry we simply need to providemore
protein in order tomaintain adequate food supply. High quality
protein must not necessarily originate from livestock. Plant
alternatives as well as insects and lab-grown meat are being discussed
as alternative sources of nutritious protein (Huis et al., 2013; Post,
2012). The demand for meat will increase on a medium long term
scale, and the biggest challenge the meat industry is facing is how to
produce meat in a more sustainable way. That goes all the way from
the farms, processing and logistics to the waste occurring at the consumer.
Much attention must be drawn to the feed conversion rates
and breeding programs as the main part of the environmental load
comes from the farms (Nguyen, Hermansen, & Mogensen, 2011). However,
there is still a lot to do from an industrial point of view to reduce
the environmental load during processing and consumption.
The increasing demand for high quality protein and the need to be
more sustainable will change the value chains as we know them
today.Muscle based meatwill not necessarily be the main product anymore
as the value of side streams (e.g. traditional by-products)
increases, in particular as valuable food and food ingredients. This development
will change the meat industry in the years to come, and it
will be a strong driver in the development of new technology.
Almost anyone can raise an animal, kill it, cut it down and prepare a
meal. We have done so for thousands of years; thus, one can currently
still find meat production as it was done in the ancient times and at
the same time high tech meat factories around the globe. Meat is
meat, but there are differentways of processing it.Generally it can be argued
that meat is a low tech product provided by high tech supply
chains all embedded in the scientific knowledge that the international
scientific community build up as themeat business becamebig business
within the last sixty years.
In fact, the very beginning of ICoMST is a good indicator of the international
development within meat science and technology. In the early
days, the conference was called European Meeting of Meat Research
Workers (EMMRW), and the very first meeting was held in
Hämeenlinna in Finland in 1955. The initiative arose from a need in
the new meat research facilities that were created at that time particularly
in Europe. Many of the challenges they were facing at that time
were obviously relevant to many countries and still are, and the international
outlook was surely ahead of its time. EMMRW changed to
ICoMST, and in 1972 the first meeting outside Europe was held in
Canada (Vahlun, 1999).
2. History of meat technology at a glance
It is interesting to observe the key important technologies of the preceding