1	Control of Central Nervous Tissue in Meat Produced from Advanced Meat Recovery Systems Glenn Schmidt, Rob Yemm, Kirby Childs, Jim O’Callaghan and Kim Hossner
2	Project began in August, 1997 American Meat Institute wanted to follow up on report from Tam Garland and Nate Bauer entitled: Brain Emboli in Lungs of Cattle After Stunning Lancet 1996. 348:610
3	Control of Central Nervous Tissue in Meat Produced from Advanced Meat Recovery Systems Goal: To maintain consumer confidence in products derived from Advanced Meat Recovery (AMR) systems and provide industry with an objective scientific means of complying with existing regulations.
4	Spinal Cord Elimination Carcass Split - Proper carcass split is critical step.
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6	Spinal Cord Removal Procedures Kill Floor Assigned Worker to vacuum spinal cord from spinal canal. Second employee, visual check and remove any remaining with hand scraper All Miss-splits - opened and spinal cord removed. Any failed AFSL for spinal cord removal, lot will be tagged and checked 100%. Second saw located in Sales Cooler.
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12	Spinal Cord Checks - Fabrication Zero tolerance for Spinal Cord presence in Bones Continual monitoring of bones going to Protecon by production employees. Any bone with evidence of spinal cord is removed and sent to inedible rendering. Any bones that have been inked indicating miss-split are removed and sent to inedible rendering.
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14	Verification Procedures Once per hour, Technical Services personnel will check 10 neck-bones for evidence of spinal cord. Times and results will be recorded. If any spinal cord is found: Immediate notification of; 1. Technical Services; 2. Trim and Grind; 3. Fab Supt.; 4. Rendering All Protecon production back to last clear check will then be tagged, sent to inedible rendering. All failures will be documented.
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17	Summary Elimination of Central Nervous Tissue from products. Carcass Splitting Spinal Cord Elimination Verification of Program
18	What do we have an ELISA for? Glial fibrillary acidic protein Jim O ’Callaghan NIOSH Morgantown, WV
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20	It worked! An Enzyme Linked Immunosorbant Assay for Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein as an Indicator of the Presence of Brain or Spinal Cord in Meat J. Food Protection 1999, 62:294
21	GFAP Immunohistochemistry Example
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29	Colorimetric GFAP/ELISA
30	Flourometric GFAP/ELISA
31	R-Biopharm Ridascreen^® Risk Material
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33	Correlation among GFAP – ELISA Methods
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35	Levels of GFAP ng/mg tissue Spinal cord 2,000 Brain 600 Sciatic 12 Cervical ganglia 2 Cuts 0-18 Bone saw dust 0-11 Heart blood clot 0-7
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41	GFAP Levels on Cut Surfaces of Beef Subprimals Average: Range : % < 1.0 ng/mg:
42	GFAP Levels on Cut Surfaces of Beef Subprimals Average: Range : % < 1.0 ng/mg:
43	GFAP Levels on Cut Surfaces of Beef Subprimals Average: Range : % < 1.0 ng/mg:
44	GFAP Levels on Cut Surfaces of Beef Subprimals Average: Range : % < 1.0 ng/mg:
45	GFAP Levels on Cut Surfaces of Beef Subprimals Average: Range : % < 1.0 ng/mg:
46	GFAP Mean and SD Levels in 7 Low and 7 High Plants
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48	Conclusions: Industry Trade Associations will continue to assist plants in implementing GMP’s for spinal cord removal. All GFAP analytical methods can be used to detect CNS tissue in AMR products and to verify spinal cord removal procedures have been properly implemented.
49	Conclusions: (Cont’d) Considerable sample to sample variation exists for all analytical methods which dictates test results be charted over time to establish appropriate process control limits. AMR and Ground Chuck with AMR included, show mean GFAP levels below those found in various muscle cuts.
50	GFAP TEAM
51	ACKNOWLEDGMENTS