Following a meeting this week between the Food Standards Agency and the pressure group Coalition Against Nitrites, The FSA has reiterated its position that there is “no evidence” that removing nitrites from processed meat makes it safer, rejecting the group’s claims that nitrites should be treated as a major cancer risk on par with tobacco or asbestos. The agency maintains that nitrites are “essential” for ensuring the microbiological safety of certain products, particularly in preventing Clostridium botulinum.
At every stage, the UK processing industry strictly adheres to regulations set by the Food Standards Agency and keeps nitrite and nitrate levels within the legal limits. But there has also been significant and ongoing work by processors to reduce nitrites in cured pork products.
BMPA’s Technical Operations Director, David Lindars explains the massive improvements that have been achieved by the British meat industry, which many people are perhaps unaware of: “Working with the latest scientific research, our producers have, over the last four years, been implementing new methods to get nitrite use as low as possible without jeopardising public health. In fact, BMPA members have achieved up to a two-thirds reduction in the need for nitrite use in products, which is well below the FSA limits.”
It’s important to note the time frame of these reductions, which have happened relatively recently. Some of the scientific studies that underpin the calls to ban nitrites date back to the early 2000s and beyond. Those that involve humans instead of rats and mice track diet trends that stretch back as long as 50 or 60 years and were conducted in other parts of the world with different products and standards. It’s likely that those products bear little resemblance to what you can buy today in British supermarkets.
David Lindars adds further context by explaining: “While nitrites play an important role in food safety, the ultimate decision on the amount used in different curing recipes rests not with the processors, but with the product brand owners. Competing brands commission their own-label recipes which can be quite varied.” Given that nitrite-free products are available in the UK, it will be consumers that ultimately drive demand.
On the subject of formulations and recipes used in processing, it’s worth clarifying how BMPA’s 2021 challenge testing fits into the picture. A series of one-off challenge tests was done to test different levels of nitrites in cured meat. Importantly, it wasn’t a formal peer-reviewed research study. The tests were only performed once and not repeated, so the results can’t be taken as statistically significant.
While such challenge tests are regularly performed throughout the food industry to help inform internal company decisions on formulation and other processing methods, they shouldn’t be regarded as a scientifically proven basis on which to form Government policy decisions. This would require a formal peer-reviewed scientific study to be performed. Such formal research is regularly reviewed by the Food Standards Agency who set the regulations which industry then implements.
You can read The Grocer’s write-up of the meeting this week.
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