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

Meat safety and quality control require analytical tools that are fast, selective, and reliable in complex, lipid- and protein-rich matrices where conventional laboratory methods are often too slow, costly, and centralized. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), often described as plastic antibodies generated through templated polymerization, are emerging as a powerful alternative to biological receptors due to their tunable selectivity, high chemical and thermal stability, and ease of integration into portable sensing platforms. This review provides a focused, meat-centric and forward-looking synthesis of MIP design and sensing innovations for detecting veterinary drug residues, mycotoxins, spoilage biomarkers, and meat-borne pathogens. We critically compare key fabrication routes (bulk, surface-grafting, core-shell, emulsion and Pickering emulsion polymerizations), highlighting strategies such as hierarchical templating, epitope, and multi-template imprinting to improve binding-site accessibility and reduce nonspecific adsorption in real meat extracts. We then map how MIPs couple with modern transducers, including nanomaterial-enhanced electrochemical platforms, fluorescence and quantum dot systems, and SERS-active composites, as well as QCM and paper-microfluidic formats for low-infrastructure screening. Finally, we consider how emerging innovations may advance MIP-based sensors from laboratory concepts to practical tools, enabling decentralized, real-time monitoring throughout the meat supply chain from processing to retail and consumption.