In animal sciences, the number of published meta-analyses is increasing at a rate of 15% per year. This current review focuses on the good practices and the potential pitfalls in the conduct of meta-analyses in animal sciences, nutrition in particular. Once the study objectives have been defined, several key phases must be considered when doing a meta-analysis. First, as a principle of traceability, criteria used to select or discard publications should be clearly stated in a way that one could reproduce the final selection of data. Then, the coding phase, aiming to isolate specific experimental factors for an accurate graphical and statistical interpretation of the database, is discussed. Following this step, the study of the levels of independence of factors and of the degree of data balance of the meta-design represents an essential phase to ensure the validity of statistical processing. The consideration of the study effect as fixed or random must next be considered. It appears based on several examples that this choice does not generally have any influence on the conclusions of a meta-analysis when the number of experiments is sufficient.

在动物科学中，已发表的荟萃分析的数量正以每年15％的速度增长。本篇综述着重于动物科学，特别是营养学的荟萃分析中的良好实践和潜在陷阱。确定研究目标后，进行荟萃分析时必须考虑几个关键阶段。首先，作为可追溯性的原则，应该以一种可以重现最终数据选择的方式明确说明用于选择或丢弃出版物的标准。然后，讨论了编码阶段，旨在分离出特定的实验因素，以便对数据库进行精确的图形和统计解释。完成此步骤后，元设计的因素独立性水平和数据平衡程度的研究代表了确保统计处理有效性的重要阶段。接下来必须考虑将研究效果视为固定的还是随机的。根据几个示例，当实验数量足够时，这种选择通常不会对荟萃分析的结论产生任何影响。