The farming and agri-food sectors are faced with an increasing demand by consumers for high-quality products. The current major questions are thus how to define quality, and how to increase the quality of animal products to satisfy these new requirements. This is the reason why the Cattle Commission of the European Association of Animal Production (EAAP) organised a specific session on this topic at its Annual Meeting which was held in Bled (Slovenia) in September 2004. This session dealt with the manipulation and evaluation of bovine milk and meat composition and quality with various indicators (commercial, physical, biochemical, molecular or other). These indicators are any method, biological trait, or physical property which may be useful to predict a quality trait. Quality includes sensory traits, nutritional properties of products, their ability to be processed and also any consideration about traceability (genetic, geographic or nutritional traceability). Thus, the full spectrum of quality attributes are discussed. Indicators may also be considered as predictors. In this respect, contributors discussed the detection early in life of the ability of animals to produce meat or milk of high quality. Indicators may also be useful for consumers when they buy meat or milk as official or commercial signs of quality. All the review papers and the short communications which were presented in this session will be in this EAAP publication entitled "Indicators of milk and beef quality". Additional papers either presented in 2003 in the EAAP Annual Meeting or from invited authors were added to complete the publication.