Health Canada said it will recommend that the food and drug law in the country be amended to allow the use of sodium diacetate and sodium acetate as preservatives in ready-to-eat meat products.
According to the American Meat Institute, the amended rules would allow the use of such preservatives in standardised and non-standardised preparations of meat, meat by-products, poultry meat, poultry meat by-products, prepared and preserved fish products at a maximum level of use of 0.25% of final product weight.
The Institute says that this would allow meat processors to re-formulate RTE products with a combination of lactate and diacetate as an antimicrobial aimed primarily at controlling the growth of Listeria monocytogenes. This combination of antimicrobials has been permitted in the US since 2000.