Raman spectroscopy for rapid fingerprint analysis of meat quality and security: Principles, progress and prospects

Meat nutrition and safety is highly related to people's health and quality of life. There is a huge demand to rapidly analyze meat quality during product processing and storage, but few rapid detection tools. Traditional strategies have certain disadvantages, including time-consuming, expensive, damage to samples, and the need for professional operators. Nowadays, Raman spectroscopy is drawing more and more attention due to its potential in fingerprint, specificity, speed, non-destructive and portable. This comprehensive review first briefly introduces the principles of meat analysis by common Raman techniques, e.g. Raman spectroscopy, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), Raman chemical imaging (RCI), and spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS), and then focus on their analytical applications on structure analysis, quality evaluation, and security control. This review also prospects the future development trend and challenges in detecting and analyzing meat and meat products.