Valorization of meat by-products

The increasing growth, urbanization and wealth of the global population have resulted in a growing necessity to improve the utilization of the existing protein sources as well as the development of sustainable food productions. Humans have evolved by consuming foods of both animal and vegetal origin, nonetheless, meat is an essential bedrock of the human diet due to the supply of high-quality proteins whose aminoacidic composition more closely matches human dietary requirements. However, animal slaughtering and meat processing generate huge amounts of edible and inedible residuals that possess great potential for their exploitation in both food and non-food fields. Therefore, the implementation of planning and management strategies as well as the improvement of a sustainable valorization of by-products have become key tasks for the meat industry, which has been made huge efforts to turn nearly all edible and inedible by-products into something marketable. Within this context, this chapter mainly aims at providing a useful overview of the definitions, the regulatory framework, and the volume of residuals generated by the meat industry and offering an insight into current and innovative strategies aimed at their valorization, with a special reference to the exploitation of the protein fraction obtainable from meat by-products.