Circular Feeding with Agro-Industrial By-Products: Impacts on Meat Quality and Sustainability

The proposed Research Topic is positioned at the intersection of animal nutrition, meat science, and circular bioeconomy. It focuses on the use of agro-industrial by-products such as residues from fruit, cereal, oilseed, and fermentation industries as potential feed alternatives and resources in livestock production systems, by evaluating all subsequent effects on meat production, meat quality and product safety. The livestock systems are under increasing pressure to reduce dependence on human-edible feed ingredients, lower environmental footprints, and valorize food-chain residues, while still delivering high-quality animal-derived foods. Although agro-industrial by-products are widely studied for nutritional and economic value, the downstream effects on muscle biology, post-mortem metabolism, and consumer-relevant meat traits remain insufficiently integrated across disciplines. Meat quality ultimately determines product acceptability, shelf life, and market value, making it a critical endpoint for assessing the real sustainability of alternative feeding strategies. Moreover, by combining multidisciplinary approaches along with advances in feed processing, bioactive compound characterization, and modern analytical tools (metabolomics and lipidomic), the current topic enables a farm-to-fork perspective, very important for translating circular feeding concepts into robust, quality-driven, and scalable livestock systems.The Research Topic addresses a global important gap between the growing use of agro-industrial by-products in animal feeding and their insufficiently understood effects on meat quality. While by-products are widely promoted for improving feed sustainability and reducing costs, the influence on specific meat quality traits, such as lipid oxidation, fatty acid composition, color stability, tenderness, sensory attributes, and shelf life remains fragmented and poorly integrated into circular livestock models. The collection will focus on clarifying how variability in by-product composition and the presence of bioactive compounds (polyphenols, fibers, residual lipids) interact with muscle metabolism and post-mortem processes. The research questions include whether agro-industrial by-products can enhance meat quality alongside environmental performance, which processing or biotechnological strategies optimize their effectiveness, and how feeding approaches align with consumer expectations and regulatory frameworks. Recent advances in metabolomics, lipidomic, and bioprocessing technologies, together with increased availability of standardized by-products and strong policy drivers for food-waste valorization, make this a timely and necessary topic. By linking sustainable feeding strategies directly to final product quality, this Research Topic fits squarely within the scope of sustainable food systems and supports the transition toward resilient, circular, and quality-driven livestock production.Circular Feeding with Agro-Industrial By-Products: Impacts on Meat Quality and Sustainability, focuses on agro-industrial by-products used in livestock feeding and their direct implications for meat quality and sustainability. The collection emphasizes studies that move beyond feed replacement or performance metrics to address muscle biology, post-mortem processes, and consumer-relevant quality traits. Contributions should adopt an integrated farm-to-fork perspective, linking circular feeding strategies with measurable outcomes in meat quality, safety, and environmental performance. Purely descriptive feed composition studies without meat-quality endpoints are outside the scope.Invited sub-themes include: Effects of agro-industrial by-products on meat physicochemical, nutritional, and sensory traits Role of bioactive compounds in modulating muscle metabolism and oxidative stability Processing and biotechnological treatments of by-products to enhance meat quality outcomes Species-specific responses (ruminants, pigs, poultry, aquaculture species) Links between circular feeding strategies, meat quality, and sustainability indicators Consumer perception, regulatory aspects, and market implications.Manuscript types welcomed: Original Research, Review, Systematic Review, Mini-Review, Perspective, Brief Research Report, and Data Report. Topic editors: Petru Alexandru Vlaicu, Grigore Daniela-Mihaela Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83595/circular-feeding-with-agro-industrial-by-products-impacts-on-meat-quality-and-sustainability