Toward Intelligent Meat Safety Systems: Molecularly Imprinted Polymers and Digital Integration

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Materials Science
• Food Science

Background:

• Conventional meat safety analysis methods are slow, costly, and centralized.
• Complex meat matrices (lipids, proteins) challenge traditional analytical tools.
• Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) offer tunable selectivity and stability as artificial receptors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review MIP design and sensing innovations for meat safety applications.
• To focus on detecting veterinary drugs, mycotoxins, spoilage, and pathogens in meat.
• To explore MIP integration with various sensing platforms for practical use.

Main Methods:

• Comparison of MIP fabrication routes: bulk, surface-grafting, core-shell, emulsion, Pickering emulsion.
• Strategies for enhanced binding: hierarchical, epitope, and multi-template imprinting.
• Integration of MIPs with transducers: electrochemical, fluorescence, quantum dots, SERS, QCM, paper-microfluidics.

Main Results:

• MIPs demonstrate potential for high selectivity and stability in complex meat samples.
• Various fabrication and imprinting strategies improve MIP performance.
• MIPs coupled with diverse transducers enable low-infrastructure, sensitive detection.

Conclusions:

• MIP-based sensors are promising for decentralized, real-time meat safety monitoring.
• Advancements in MIP technology can bridge the gap from lab concepts to practical tools.
• MIPs can enhance safety and quality control throughout the meat supply chain.