The 21st‐century consumer is highly demanding when it comes to the health benefits of food and food products. In the pursuit of attracting these consumers and easing the rise in demand for high‐quality meat products, the processed meat sector is intensely focused on developing reformulated, low‐fat, healthy meat products. Meat and meat products are considered the primary sources of saturated fatty acids in the human diet. Therefore, these reformulation strategies aim to improve the fatty acid profile and reduce total fat and cholesterol, which can be achieved by replacing animal fat with plant‐based oils; it could be performed as direct inclusion of these oils or pre‐emulsified oils. However, emulsions offer a viable option for incorporating vegetable oils while avoiding the multiple issues of direct inclusion of these oils in meat products. Processed meat products are popular worldwide and showing a gradually increasing trend of consumption. Various types of plant‐based oils have been studied as fat replacers in meat products. This review will focus on possible methods to reduce the saturated fatty acid content in meat products.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted meat production, supply chain, and meat prices that caused a severe socio-economic crisis worldwide. Initially, meat and meat products' prices increased due to less production and increased demand because of panic buying. Whereas, later on, both meat production and demand were significantly decreased due to lockdown restrictions and lower purchasing power of the consumers that results in a decrease in meat prices. In early April 2020, meat packing facilities started to shut down due to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus among workers. Furthermore, meat producers and processors faced difficulty in harvesting and shipment of the products due to lockdown situations, decrease in labor force, restrictions in movement of animals within and across the country and change in legislation of local and international export market. These conditions adversely impacted the meat industry due to decrease in meat production, processing and distribution facilities. It is suggested that the integration among all the meat industry stakeholders is quite essential for the sustainability of the industry's supply chain to cope with such devastating conditions the future may hold. This review aimed to discuss different aspects of the meat industry and supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic and proposed some future directions.