Reply To: Capitalism’s animal holocaust continues.

Hi Alan – industrial scale curing uses very high levels of nitrates. The higher levels of nitrates increase the curing speed of the curing process and increase profits.

Most bacon produced in the UK is wet cured, soaked in brine tanks for shorter periods than dry curing. The most common form of curing in mass produced bacon uses the injection of brine into the meat, which is then out through tumblers for a couple of hours which distributes the cure (and the low cost water) throughout the meat. It’s then frozen to be sliced, with the water and the nitrates within the meat. It can contain up to 30% water and can be mass produced in just over 2 hours.

This is why it tastes so salty and turns to mush when you cook it. It contains far, far higher levels of nitrates than traditionally cured pork.

Traditional British style sausages have very few preservatives than continental sausages. Most continental sausages have the meat cured whilst mincing, Toulouse sausage, Chorizo, etc. have that highly salty tast to them.

I generally use only a little salt, alongside traditional spices (pepper, mace, nutmeg, etc).

The high levels of nitrate in the industrial process increases shelf life at the expense of human life!

Again the nitrate story is far more complex than the way the papers present it. The amount of nitrate in some vegetables can be very high. Spinach, for example, may contain 500 to 1900 parts per million of sodium nitrate. Less than five percent of daily sodium nitrite intake comes from cured meats. Nearly 93 percent of sodium nitrite comes from leafy vegetables & tubers and our own saliva. Vegetables contain sodium nitrate, which is released as sodium nitrite when it comes into contact with saliva in the mouth.