Integrating Innovation and Sustainability in Livestock Feeding: Impacts on Carcass Traits and Meat Quality

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the livestock sector has faced mounting challenges in reconciling high productivity with environmental sustainability and animal welfare. Against this backdrop, animal nutrition has emerged as a key driver of innovation, providing strategies to enhance feed efficiency, optimize resource utilization, and positively impact carcass characteristics and meat quality. These attributes are essential for meeting evolving consumer expectations and maintaining market relevance.

This Special Issue focuses on the role of sustainable feeding practices in shaping production efficiency and the quality of animal-derived products. The use of alternative feed ingredients, functional additives, and precision nutrition approaches has shown promising results in enhancing animal performance and reducing fat deposition, improving tenderness and refining carcass composition. These strategies also play a vital role in developing healthier processed meat products with reduced fat and salt content. Furthermore, sustainable nutritional interventions significantly reduce the environmental footprint of livestock systems by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing circularity. A deeper understanding of how these nutritional strategies impact animal physiology is essential for maximizing product quality while promoting economic and ecological sustainability.

This Special Issue invites contributions exploring the latest research in sustainable animal nutrition and its effects on carcass traits, meat quality and processed products. We welcome studies that address novel feed ingredients, dietary formulations, functional additives, precision feeding technologies and the physiological mechanisms that underlie the effects of nutrition on meat production.

Dr. Ana Leite
Dr. Sandra Rodrigues
Prof. Dr. Alfredo Jorge Costa Teixeira
Guest Editors

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