We describe a comparison of the fluorescence spectra of bovine tissues with murine tissues in order to determine whether spectral features are conserved and whether an appropriate and practical laboratory small animal model system could be identified to be used for investigation of tissue- and age-related fluorescence signal patterns. Recently it has been shown that spectral signatures of lipofuscin have enabled the detection of bovine central nervous system (CNS) tissue in meat products with high sensitivity (Schönenbrücher, H., Adhikary, R., Mukherjee, P., Casey, T.A., Rasmussen, M.A., Maistrovich, F.D., Hamir, A.N., Kehrli, M.J., Richt, J., Petrich, J.W. [2008] J Agric Food Chem56, 6220-6226). We report that brain and spinal cord of mice provide fluorescence spectra similar to those of bovine brain and spinal cord. It is concluded that murine CNS tissue is an appropriate model system for bovine CNS tissue for the development of fluorometric CNS detection assays.