Since the main ultimate goal of farm animal raising is the production of 
proteins for human consumption, research tools to investigate proteins play a 
major role in farm animal and meat science. Indeed, proteomics has been applied 
to the field of farm animal science to monitor in vivo performances of livestock 
animals (growth performances, fertility, milk quality etc.), but also to further 
our understanding of the molecular processes at the basis of meat quality, which 
are largely dependent on the post mortem biochemistry of the muscle, often in a 
species-specific way. Post mortem alterations to the muscle proteome reflect the 
biological complexity of the process of "muscle to meat conversion," a process 
that, despite decades of advancements, is all but fully understood. This is 
mainly due to the enormous amounts of variables affecting meat tenderness per 
se, including biological factors, such as animal species, breed 
specific-characteristic, muscle under investigation. However, it is rapidly 
emerging that the tender meat phenotype is not only tied to genetics (livestock 
breeding selection), but also to extrinsic factors, such as the rearing 
environment, feeding conditions, physical activity, administration of hormonal 
growth promotants, pre-slaughter handling and stress, post mortem handling. From 
this intricate scenario, biochemical approaches and systems-wide integrated 
investigations (metabolomics, transcriptomics, interactomics, phosphoproteomics, 
mathematical modeling), which have emerged as complementary tools to proteomics, 
have helped establishing a few milestones in our understanding of the events 
leading from muscle to meat conversion. The growing integration of omics 
disciplines in the field of systems biology will soon contribute to take further 
steps forward.