Meat Inspections Steps
Meat inspection is carried out to ensure that normal animals are slaughtered and abnormal animals are separated from healthy ones. In addition, it is done to ensure that meat is safe and will not cause risk to heath (Herenda, 1). To ensure that meat is safe for human consumption, the following steps are followed in official meat inspection.
Antemortem Inspection
This is supposed to be done within 24hours; emergency slaughter and veterinary examination are included in this inspection. The key things to observe are animal behavior, nutritional status and abnormality signs. This step is performed to ensure that all animals destined to slaughter are screened. Clinical information is extracted for disease diagnosis (Herenda, 1). This inspection is also done to separate the dirty animals and diseased animals for the purpose of reducing contamination. Suffering and injured animals are treated humanly and they receive emergency slaughter. Antemortem inspection is done to avoid killing floor contamination through separating reportable animals (Herenda, 1). In the slaughter house, the inspection makes sure that there is cleanliness.
Postmortem Inspection
In this step, organs and carcass portions are inspected to detect abnormalities. This step is serious and it requires technical knowledge in order to conduct viewing, palpation, classify the lesions, and coordinate antemortem and postemorten findings among other roles (Herenda, 2). In inspecting organs and carcasses, carcass judgment is done through identifying abnormal and affected carcass. An important point to note is that carcass judgments are done from two conditions; the first is localized condition -where animal defense mechanisms lead to localized conditions such as jaundice. Second is generalized condition where the animal’s defense mechanism causes the spread of diseases due to lymphatic systems (Herenda, 2). This condition leads to lesion in kidney and other areas, abscesses and join and lymph node inflammation.
Work cited
Herenda, Drago C. Manual on Meat Inspection for Developing Countries. Rome, 1994. Print.
