The AMSA’s roots are a half century deep in meat science, beginning with the first Reciprocal Meat Conference held in 1948. Formally incorporated in 1964, AMSA is organized as a professional society. Its unique role is to provide the forum for all interests in meat—commercial, academic, government and consumer—to come together in a reasoned, scientifically-based atmosphere and address the needs of the processing and marketing segments of industry, the consuming public, its own members and others in the biological and nutritional sciences.