Do Trealy Farm products contain nitrates and nitrites?
This is a *vast* question and Trealy have often talked for 30 minutes+ with people just to get the bare essentials of this issue nailed down. However, in short they don’t use nitrates.
They do use sodium nitrite in very small quantities. As nitrites don’t stay long in the meat they have test results to show that all of our air-dried products (which are long matured) have no residual nitrite in them (lab results test down to 5milligrams per kilo) at the point of sale.
They use small amounts of nitrites as they protect against a wide range of potentially pathogenic organisms, and are pretty much the only thing that protects against botulism (other than cooking to over 121 degrees centigrade ). Because of this Environmental Health pretty much insist on it. Beware, incidentally, of ‘nitrite-free’ products which actually contain commercially obtainable nitrite derived from vegetables such as celery and therefore which currently slip through E.U. labelling law on the subject.
Trealy are happy to talk to you further on this issue and plan to increase the amount of information around this topic on their website in the future.