**5. Conclusions**

MEATabolomics has allowed us to better understand skeletal muscle physiology in animals and molecular factors associated with meat quality. Information raised in MEATabolomics can be used as phenotypic indices of muscle properties and meat quality traits, which connects the external phenotype of meat (the quality traits) to regulatory factors in animals or conditions in the production systems. The techniques for metabolomics have been progressing, especially in the process of statistical data analyses, as shown in some examples of attempts to introduce new algorithms and to develop models for phenotype prediction. On the other hand, metabolomics targeting animal blood and meat exudate metabolome, along with use of meat metabolome data, would promote the prediction of meat quality as a non-invasive methodology by utilizing these data. Further studies on the associations of muscles and meat with animal development, stress conditions, welfare and sustainability issues, cooking methods, consumer acceptability, and sensory characteristics would be future challenges for MEATabolomics to be applied to, despite the complex biological processes during meat production and di fficulties in chemical identification of secondary metabolites observed in processed and cooked meat. Nevertheless, MEATabolomics is expected to further expand comprehensive association studies with genomics or transcriptomics in an integrative fashion, being supported by the development of new detecting techniques such as REIMS and statistical analytic resources.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, S.M.; writing—original draft preparation, S.M.; writing—review and editing, T.M., S.U., T.K., and P.E. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was partly supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS KAKENHI JP18K05960 to SM).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
