Abstract:Trimethylamine（TMA）is an important indicator to measure the degree of putrification in aquatic animals including their products and meat products.Effective monitoring of TMA and establishment of accurate，sensitive and reliable detection methods are the most important problems to be solved in food industry.In recent years，many researchers have tried to analyze trimethylamine in meat products from various angles，including factors of formation，pathways of transformation，metabolic ways，mechanism of toxicity，detection methods and so on.Trimethylamine was firstly introduced，then summarized the relationship between trimethylamine and human health，various methods for the detection of trimethylamine since the 21st century were analyzed and summarized emphatically，including headspace gas chromatography spectrometry，gas chromatography-mass spectrography，ion mobility spectroscopy，ion chromatography，sensor methods，capillary electrophores and so on.Finally the development direction was prospected.