ABSTRACT The diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis (TB) by molecular techniques has been broadly studied. These methods allow accelerating the diagnosis, in addition to presenting high specificity and sensitivity in the identification of the pathogen, critical characteristic for public health, especially when it comes to the direct diagnosis of the biologic samples, which has been little explored. This paper has evaluated a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (mPCR) as a tool to diagnose TB, which was performed directly on the granulomatous material of suspicious lesions collected in a cold chamber under state inspection in the state of Bahia, Brazil. Of the 74 samples evaluated, 14.86% were positive, with 10.81% positive for mPCR and culture, 4.05% negative for cultivation and positive for mPCR. The correlation between the cultivation and the mPCR presented agreeance higher than 61.54% of the cases. The results have indicated that the protocol proved itself effective, fast and very promising in the surveillance in slaughterhouses for the diagnosis of tuberculosis directly from the granuloma.