Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science, NARO

The Animal Products Group studies how to achieve meat animal production that is both efficient and productive, while also maintaining high quality and value. Improving productivity is important for sustainable animal farming, but it should not reduce the consistency or value of the final products.
Meat animal farmers and distributors in Japan often believe that high eating quality requires raising animals for a longer time and with greater care, which increases both time and cost. Reducing variation in animal products is also an important issue regarding productivity, because livestock are living animals, growth performance and meat quality naturally vary.
To address these issues, we work to reduce such variation and improve efficiency by using beneficial gut bacteria and related approaches. At the same time, we develop and use measurement technologies to evaluate meat quality, including appearance, texture, taste, odor, and consumer preference, and study how these qualities are related to productivity. Our research combines approaches from microbiology, biology, chemistry, imaging, sensory evaluation, and consumer studies. The goal of our work is to develop production and evaluation methods that improve efficiency while providing meat products that consumers can trust, supporting animal-related industries from farm to table.