Meat quality, safety, dietetics, environmental impact, and alternatives now and ten years ago: a critical review and perspective

Abstract Meat consumption is growing steadily. As with any research, meat investigation requires an overall view of the study field to identify current directions and reveal prospective trends. The number of publications on meat research is growing steadily and reaching several thousand publications per year. This creates difficulties in covering all available information in the field and forces researchers to increasingly limit themselves to narrow issues in their direction. We analysed the main trends in meat research published recently and ten years ago. We identified areas of research in the field of meat based on abstracts of articles with the word “meat” in the title published in the Web of Science database in the time intervals 2000–2003, 2010–2013 and 2020–2023. We also mapped terms from articles directly related to meat using VOSviewer and the OpenAlex application programming interface. Among the selected dominant directions of the Web of Science, research areas were systematised based on abstracts of articles and reviews: 1182 publications in 2013 and 2610 publications in 2023. Such an increase in the number of publications indicates a sharp rise in interest in the topic and the existence of questions that need to be resolved. Therefore, an overview of the main directions in meat research in 2013 and 2023 was presented. Research areas with a declining share of articles and actively developing directions were identified, and unresolved pressing questions and trends were presented. The revealed changes demonstrate a shift from microbiology and technology of obtaining meat and meat products towards research methods development, problems of nutrition, and global warming. In conclusion, the prospects for research in these areas have been considered. The need to regulate the negative effects of meat production and consumption justifies the rationality of interdisciplinary approaches integrating environmental, health, and ethical perspectives. The most promising areas for further research are rationale and developing strategies to reduce meat consumption. Graphical Abstract