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The aim of this study was to present three sample preparation methods for the determination of Cd, Pb and Sn in meat by Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (GFAAS): acid digestion, solubilization with tetramethylammonium hydroxide and formic acid. For the digestion with HNO3, a conventional open system with a cold finger was used. This system helped to avoid losses of analytes and reagents by volatilization, permitting to operate at high temperatures applied at a digester block and reducing the digestion time (∼1 h). Solubilizations were performed at room temperature. The slurry was left standing overnight and remained closed until achieving complete solubilization. The temperature program of the graphite furnace was optimized for each element in the different means of preparation samples using a mixture of Pd–Mg. The figures of merit were similar for all sample preparation methods evaluated. The limits of detection obtained for the acid digestion procedure were 0.0006, 0.0164 and 0.0520 μg g−1for Cd, Pb and Sn, respectively. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the results obtained by the three sample preparation methods, recovery tests for four real meat samples were performed and the recoveries ranged from 93.7 to 109%, supporting the accuracy of the method. Also, different certified reference materials of meat were analyzed and the results obtained were in agreement with the certified value at 95% of confidence (t-test). The best results were obtained by the acid digestion procedure with the cold finger system. This procedure is faster, the system is semi-closed with no significant contamination or loss of analytes by volatilization and it provides a better signal/noise ratio.