The Department of Medical Sciences has disclosed the results of safety monitoring of popular processed meat products over the three years from 2024 to 2026, finding contamination with “nitrates and nitrites”, or curing salts, in several products.
Some samples were found to contain the substances at levels above the legal standard, particularly products from small-scale operators lacking standardised control of production formulations.
Most recently, the Department of Medical Sciences detected nitrite levels as high as 3,880 milligrams per kilogram in a “ready-to-eat cooked meat dish”, almost 50 times the legal standard.
