A wonderful topic was thrown in the comments - they offered to talk about how to choose really good meat.
It is remarkable in that there is practically no answer to the question. No, it, of course, has some well-known signs, but do they always work?
Take at least pork (I don't like it and rarely buy it): it seems like pink, and beautiful, and clean lies on the counter, and you start cooking - it stinks. They say this happens if the wild boar is not well-groomed, or the pig is “hunting”. You can check if the meat will smell by piercing it with a heated knife - but who will give a heated knife to poke into a piece?
The fact that good fresh meat should not have a strange shade, be greenish or too dark, it should not have such iridescent, like “gasoline” stains, everyone knows that. If schematically, then fresh beef is red, lamb is darker than beef, pork is pink, veal is deep pink.
True, there are nuances that can change the color. And this is not only the age of the animal (the older the beef, the darker), but also the way of feeding, and even the ripening time.
Ripening occurs after slaughter. It is not freshly slaughtered meat that is brought to the market. The carcasses sometimes hang down for a week, or even more. The fresh carcass will be "loose", it will not even be possible to cut it properly.
Ripe, sagging meat is rich in color, and also dense and elastic to the touch. It shouldn't stick to your hands yet. So you have to touch it. If it is too soft (it is difficult to describe in words, but elasticity is felt to the touch right away) - you do not need it. It may not be fresh, or even soaked.
Dishonest sellers can color the meat by keeping it in a solution of potassium permanganate or food coloring. Therefore, his color will be beautiful, but with the quality - everything is bad.
If a piece has streaks of fat or a bone, the tint is easy to notice: the fat and bone will also be colored (perhaps not much, but the shade will be wrong). If this is a tenderloin without bone and fat, just feel, lift, inspect and sniff from all sides.
By the way: it's not so easy to determine the age of an animal by the color of its meat. Of course, when the meat is downright bluish (this is especially true for beef), or very dark, then, most likely, the cow or bull turned out to be deserved retirees of the barn. Look better at fat - the lighter, the younger. Old beef fat is yellow, more like lard, young - light. Young pork - with white-pink veins.
Another point is smell.
I already wrote that you can check pork by poking it with a hot knife. There is another way (butchers don't really like it either, but those who are sure of the quality will agree). This tiny piece of meat needs to be set on fire with a lighter or match. If it is smelly, the smell will immediately give up everything with giblets. Good pork will smell almost like a shish kebab.
You don't need to heat the beef. You can just smell the beef. Good beef can smell like... milk. Bad - barn, cow, manure - whatever. The older the animal goes to meat, the worse it will smell (and this smell has nothing to do with spoilage, the smell of spoiled meat, I think, you will recognize).
And one more thing - even on the market meat must have a stamp and a certificate that it has passed the veterinary control.