WASHINGTON – Health Canada announced Monday that it will recommend that Canadian food and drug regulations be amended to permit the use of sodium diacetate and sodium acetate as preservatives.

The additives would be used in standardized and unstandardized preparations of meat, meat by-products, poultry, poultry by-products and prepared and preserved fish products at a maximum level of 0.25 percent of final product weight.

This move will reportedly allow meat processors to re-formulate ready-to-eat (RTE) products with a combination of lactate along with diacetate as an antimicrobial in certain RTE products with the primary target being the control of growth of Listeria monocytogenes. This combination of antimicrobials has been allowed in the U.S. since March 2000.

For more information, visit http://www.meatami.com/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/42267.

Source: American Meat Institute