Meat Production and Supply Chain Under COVID-19 Scenario: Current Trends and Future Prospects.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted meat production, supply chain, and meat prices that caused a severe socio-economic crisis worldwide. Initially, meat and meat products' prices increased due to less production and increased demand because of panic buying. Whereas, later on, both meat production and demand were significantly decreased due to lockdown restrictions and lower purchasing power of the consumers that results in a decrease in meat prices. In early April 2020, meat packing facilities started to shut down due to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus among workers. Furthermore, meat producers and processors faced difficulty in harvesting and shipment of the products due to lockdown situations, decrease in labor force, restrictions in movement of animals within and across the country and change in legislation of local and international export market. These conditions adversely impacted the meat industry due to decrease in meat production, processing and distribution facilities. It is suggested that the integration among all the meat industry stakeholders is quite essential for the sustainability of the industry's supply chain to cope with such devastating conditions the future may hold. This review aimed to discuss different aspects of the meat industry and supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic and proposed some future directions.

Effect of animal age, postmortem chilling rate, and aging time on meat quality attributes of water buffalo and humped cattle bulls.

The study was aimed to investigate the influence of animal age, post-slaughter chilling rate, and aging time on meat quality of M. longissimus dorsi (LD) of water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) and humped cattle (Bos taurus indicus) bulls. After slaughtering, one side of carcasses was subjected to rapid chilling (RC) (0 ± 2°C) and other side was hanged in controlled room temperature (25 ± 2°C) for 3 hr, then allowed to the chiller (0 ± 2°C). The meat quality traits were analyzed at 1, 7, and 14 days of storage. It was noted that rapidly chilled carcasses from the younger animals of both species missed the ideal pH/temperature window, which affects the toughness of the meat. Buffalo meat presented higher shear force, color L* values, and lower b* value as compared to the cattle meat. Moreover, meat shear force values decreased while all color coordinates and cooking loss values increased with lengthening the storage time in both age groups of cattle and buffalo. In conclusion, the tenderness of cattle meat was superior to that of buffalo and RC adversely affect the shear force values of young cattle and both age groups of buffalo bulls.