In contrast to conventional methods for the determination of meat chemical composition and quality,
near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) enables rapid, simple and simultaneous assessment of numerous meat properties.
The present article is a review of published studies that examined the ability of NIRS to predict different
meat properties. According to the published results, NIRS shows a great potential to replace the expensive and
time-consuming chemical analysis of meat composition. On the other hand, NIRS is less accurate for predicting
different a�ributes of meat quality. In view of meat quality evaluation, the use of NIRS appears more promising
when categorizing meat into quality classes on the basis of meat quality traits for example discriminating between
feeding regimes, discriminating fresh from frozen-thawed meat, discriminating strains, etc. The performance of
NIRS to predict meat properties seems limited by the reliability of the method to which it is calibrated. Moreover,
the use of NIRS may also be limited by the fact that it needs a laborious calibration for every purpose. In spite of
that, NIRS is considered to be a very promising method for rapid meat evaluation.
