Material Específico de Risco (MER) para encefalopatias transmissíveis de ruminantes.

Abstract

This paper aims to describe the activities developed during the mandatory curricular supervised internship, which is the last discipline offered by the veterinary medicine course at the Universidade Federal do Norte do Tocantins. The internship was carried out in the LKJ meat packing plant, located in Araguaína - TO, from March 13 to May 24, 2023, totaling 390 hours. The internship was supervised by the veterinarian Roberta Sagawa, who is the manager and technical responsible for Quality Assurance, and had the academic guidance of Prof. Dr. José Carlos Ribeiro Júnior. The activities performed during the internship were in the Quality Assurance area, proposing a series of activities and procedures that aim to prevent non-conformities and ensure that all products meet the legal and regulatory requirements. The activities carried out in this period were through the accompaniment of the Quality Assurance monitors. This paper describes the good manufacturing practices and the self-control programs applied to the industry in question. In addition, there is also a literature review on Specific Risk Materials (SRM) that represent potentially risk materials for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). SRMs have great importance in public health, because among the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), which is a neurodegenerative disease that affects humans. This disease is related to the consumption of meat contaminated with a protein called a prion and is infectious in nature.