Abstract
Heat stress (HS) compromises meat quality through species-specific physiological and epigenetic mechanisms during the growth period. This review investigates how antemortem disruption in energy metabolism, oxidative stress, and proteolysis caused by HS drives diverse postmortem outcomes in poultry, ruminants, and swine. Therefore, these biochemical shifts induced by HS affect consumer preferences for meat, and the direction of change varies across livestock species.
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This review does not include original datasets. All information supporting the analyses and interpretations is contained within the article.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Brain Pool program funded by the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology through the National Research Foundation of Korea (grant number:2022H1D3A2A01096260). In part, this work was also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (RS-2025-00559561).
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J.H.L.: conceptualization, visualization, writing-original draft; X.C.J.: writing-review, and editing. W.S.K.: writing-review, and editing. H.G.L.: funding acquisition, writing-review, and editing. Y.H.B.K.: funding acquisition, project administration, supervision, writing-review, and editing.
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Lee, J.H., Jin, X.C., Kim, W.S. et al. Unraveling the impact of heat stress on meat quality: integrating physiology, epigenetics, and postmortem biochemistry. npj Sci Food (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-00840-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-00840-5
