If bovine spongiform encephalopathy were found to be transmitted vertically it might become necessary to remove the spinal cord intact from all beef carcasses. One way of achieving this would be to chine the carcass, thus avoiding contamination of the edible carcass with spinal cord during carcass splitting. In line with this possible development, this study examined whether hot chining would help to tenderise beef longissimus dorsi muscle through a tenderstretch effect. Ten beef animals were slaughtered, dressed and split in the conventional way. One side from each carcass was then chined at 50 min post slaughter and chilled overnight at 1 to 2°C.