Food Preservatives Essay

1159 Words5 Pages

During the last decades, due to numerous food recalls and food borne illnesses, policy makers as well as consumer played increasing attention to food preservatives. In this sense, there are numerous food regulating agencies which try to address the various food preservations issues by setting up specific regulations, as well as inform the public about the importance of food safety, under which fall also the food preservatives. Food preservatives basically are preserving agents which ensure that manufactured food items preserve their tastes and qualities, but more importantly they are used to keep food unspoiled and thus safe to be consumed. In this paper we will be focusing on a specific food preservative namely the Sodium Sulphite which is …show more content…

The sulphites restoring the red color to raw meat creating a distorted image of freshness and it can be used to mislead customers. This specific circumstance made the Department of Agriculture of US to prohibit the sulphite use in this occasion to safety reasons. Even after this legislation there is still black spots though as ingredients treated with sulphites can be added in processed food in it’s preparation and can not be found. The FSIS which is responsible for the Safety and the Inspection of food with a borderline of 10ppm.All the processed meat products that are higher in ppm than this border has to be labelled, giving the customer the discreet action of being informed and choose products as his responsibility.
“Sulfites must also be declared if they make up one part of a multi-component dinner that contains 10 ppm or more of sulfites, even if the entire dinner contains a lower level than that” (Grotheer et al.). In the cases in which the levels ascribed by regulations are higher the producers or the seller is obliged to conduct the procedures for food recalls, in which case the products are taken of the market to ensure that they are not consumed and that they do not pose any hazards to human