The steps

1. Wear the protective gear the whole time, gloves and eye protection included, and never touch your mucous membranes with unwashed hands. Critical point
2. Handle every knife and sharp safely: never cut a sample held in your palm or leave an exposed blade where it can cut someone or fall. Critical point
3. Examine the intact carcass: body condition (nutrition and muscle mass) and hydration, skin and coat, head (eyes, ears, lips, mouth, nostrils), limbs and feet, and the perianal, genital and mammary region.
4. Open the carcass efficiently and in order and examine the major cavities.
5. Remove the viscera in an orderly, skilled way.
6. Call the examiner before dissecting the heart and, while they watch, identify both atria and ventricles, the aorta, the vena cava, the pulmonic trunk, the aortic, pulmonic, mitral and tricuspid valves and the myocardium; if no examiner is free, go on with the next step.
7. Open the larynx, the esophagus, the trachea and the mainstem bronchi, section the lungs and palpate them for inflation.
8. Check that the bile duct opens into the duodenum, open the gallbladder and section at least 2 areas of the liver.
9. Inspect the omentum and open the stomach, the duodenum, the jejunum, the ileum and the colon; incise the pancreas.
10. Section the kidneys, strip the renal capsule, follow the ureters if indicated and open the bladder; incise the testes or ovaries if the animal is intact.
11. Palpate and section the spleen.
12. Open at least 2 joints completely, one fore and one hind, and inspect the joint surfaces and synovial membranes; incise at least 2 major muscles.
13. Find and inspect the thyroid glands, the adrenal glands and both peripheral and internal lymph nodes.
14. Remove the head at the atlanto-occipital joint as if sending it for rabies testing; you do not open the skull.
15. Take a sample of the right size, shape and thickness from heart, lung, liver, small intestine, colon, stomach, spleen, pancreas, kidney, skeletal muscle, thyroid, adrenal, an internal lymph node and a peripheral lymph node; lay them out in order on the laminated sheet for the examiner.
16. Put all the samples in one container with the right volume of fixative.
17. Stop the necropsy and put the instruments down at 90 minutes.
18. On the Necropsy Report Form, mark each system and structure normal or abnormal with a brief change (for example, enlarged liver), plus sex, neutered or not, body condition and degree of autolysis, and whether each sample came from a normal or abnormal organ.
19. Report any self-injury to the examiner at once; the clock stops while it is treated.
20. Dispose of every sharp in the sharps container at the end. Critical point