Oil painting of a dish of green celery powder beside a dark air-dried beef slab and thin slices on a wooden table.

What Does 'Uncured' Actually Mean? (And Why Celery Powder Is Still a Cure)

What's in this guide

"Uncured" on a meat label means the product was cured without a synthetic curing agent. It does not mean the product was not cured. Federal regulations require the word, and in practice, most products wearing it are cured with nitrate from celery powder or a similar vegetable source. The nitrate becomes nitrite, the nitrite does the curing, and the chemistry is the same either way.

That gap between label and reality is worth understanding before you buy anything. This post explains the regulation, the chemistry, what the measured science actually shows about doses, and the one difference that genuinely matters: the synthetic version operates under a legal ceiling, and the celery version doesn't.

I'll also tell you what we do at Farmer Bill's, why, and where our product still fits inside a category that carries real and honestly reported health considerations.

The short version

Uncured meat is cured meat. The cure comes from celery instead of a bag of sodium nitrite, and it produces the same nitrite in the same way. The synthetic version has a published legal limit on how much can go in. Celery powder has no limit at all.

None of that argument is settled, and it may not be for a while. Biltong never needed it settled, because salt, vinegar, air and time did this job for centuries before anyone isolated nitrite.

At a glance

Same molecule, two different rulebooks.

  • "Uncured" is a federally compelled label term, not a description of the process. A product labeled uncured is almost always cured with a vegetable-derived source of nitrate.
  • The chemistry is identical. Celery's nitrate converts to nitrite through bacterial action in the meat, and the result cures the product the same way synthetic sodium nitrite does.
  • Synthetic curing agents have a published ceiling. Vegetable-delivered nitrate does not. Natural sources are not approved as curing agents, so the caps that attach to named synthetics never attach to celery powder.
  • Most measured surveys find no meaningful difference in what's left in the finished meat. But the spread is wider at the top of the celery-cured range, and there is no mandatory cap to contain it.
  • Nitrate from vegetables is most of what anyone eats. The molecule has a real cardiovascular benefit at dietary levels, and curing with nitrite is one of the more important food-safety technologies in history.
  • Processed meat is a category that includes our product. We're not claiming an exemption from that. We're explaining what we actually do and why.
Feature Synthetic cure (sodium nitrite) Celery-based cure
What actually cures the meat Nitrite Nitrite, converted from nitrate by bacteria
Limit on how much goes in 120–156 ppm for most sticks and cooked products None. Natural sources are not approved as curing agents
Limit on what's left in the finished meat 200 ppm None through the curing-agent rules
Cure accelerator required Yes for bacon (550 ppm ascorbate/erythorbate) No requirement
Label required No "uncured" label "Uncured" plus "No Nitrate or Nitrite Added", compelled by 9 CFR 317.17(b) and (c)(1)
Can you measure the dose going in? Yes No. Bacterial conversion varies and can't be measured at the point it goes in
How the law classifies it Approved curing agent (9 CFR 424.21(c)) Flavoring, or something that slows bacteria. Curing function not approved

The label law

The word "uncured" is a legal requirement. It is not a description of how the meat was made.

In 1972, USDA established that any meat product with a legal name definition (a standard of identity) had to say so on the label if it was made without an approved curing agent. If your product would normally be called a "cured beef stick" and you didn't use an approved curing agent, you have to call it an "uncured beef stick." That rule lives in 9 CFR 319.2.

The companion rule, 9 CFR 317.17(b) and (c)(1), requires the label to also carry the statement "No Nitrate or Nitrite Added," in letters at least half the size of the product name, adjacent to it. Both pieces of text are compelled speech. The brand didn't choose them.

That qualifier you've probably seen on the package ("except for those naturally occurring in celery powder") is not in the CFR. It's FSIS policy applied during prior label approval, documented in the FSIS Further Processing and Labeling Inspection Course from November 2021.1 The regulation mandates the denial, and the approval process then permits the asterisk.

So the label tells you which agent was not used. It says nothing about whether the meat was cured, and the practical result is a package reading "No Nitrate or Nitrite Added" on a product that almost certainly has both.

Why anyone cares

Nobody adds celery powder for flavor. They add it because people got worried about nitrite, and "no nitrates added" sells.

The worry is aimed at nitrite specifically, not at meat in general. When researchers sorted processed-meat studies by whether the meat actually contained nitrite, the nitrite ones came back positive more often: 11 of 17 studies found an increased bowel cancer association, against 23 of 49 for processed meat overall.2

Crowe, Elliott and Green (2019) reviewed the in vivo evidence and concluded it "links the consumption of meat containing nitrites and CRC risk." Counting studies this way is a weaker method than a pooled meta-analysis, and 23 of 49 is itself under half.2

Nitrite has shown up on its own elsewhere. A large French cohort found added nitrites associated with prostate cancer, and separately with type 2 diabetes, though overall cancer risk came back null for both nitrites and nitrates.34

Then the evidence that cuts the other way, and it is the biggest study of the lot. When researchers measured the nitrite reaction product directly in the body across 367,463 people and 5,115 bowel cancer cases, they found no association at all.5

Rizzolo-Brime et al. (2025) reported a hazard ratio of 1.01, null in every subtype. It matters that how much processed meat a person eats and how much nitrite is in that meat track each other almost exactly, so no observational study can cleanly separate the two.6

Set against the category as a whole, the effect is modest. IARC classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen in 2015, which describes how strong the evidence is rather than how large the risk is. Fifty grams a day is associated with roughly 18 percent higher relative risk of bowel cancer, which works out to about one extra case per 100 people from the lowest consumption to the highest.78

IARC's own Q&A names biltong and beef jerky as processed meat, and says there is not enough information to rank risk between product types. That includes what I make. I'm not going to tell you otherwise.

So the question is unresolved, and it is specifically about nitrite. That is the part worth holding onto, because a label reading "no nitrates added" does not remove the nitrite.

I don't have a stake in how that argument lands. The way I make biltong doesn't ask the question.

Same molecule

Celery powder cures meat with the same molecule synthetic nitrite uses, and it does the same job.

The pathway from celery to cure goes like this. Celery is high in nitrate. When celery juice or celery powder is added to ground meat alongside a starter culture of bacteria, those bacteria convert the nitrate to nitrite during a brief fermentation step before drying or cooking.

The nitrite then reacts with the meat's myoglobin to form the pink colour compound you see in cured meat, and it creates conditions that slow the bacteria that make people sick. Nitric oxide is the final agent in both routes. USDA's own training material states it plainly: "Natural sources of nitrite and nitrate are not approved as curing agents."1

Celery powder enters the formulation as a flavoring, or as something that slows bacteria. What it does once it's in the meat is cure it.

The chemistry here is not disputed. The nitrate-to-nitrite-to-nitric-oxide pathway is basic biochemistry, documented across the meat science literature for decades.9

More or less?

On average, probably no meaningful difference. At the top of the range, some celery-cured products run higher.

The internet has strong opinions in both directions, and the measured data is more complicated than either of them. Celery powder is a concentrated nitrate source, and synthetic sodium nitrite is more concentrated still by weight. But ingredient concentration isn't the number that matters. What matters is the dose that actually reaches the meat, and that depends on how much bacterial conversion happens, which varies with temperature, time, starter culture activity, and the product's pH.

Celery juice powder contains roughly 27,000 ppm nitrate, and newer vegetable powders can exceed 40,000 ppm.10 Sodium nitrite runs about 62,500 ppm nitrite. Sebranek and Bacus wrote in 2007 that "it is not possible to analytically measure the amount of nitrite produced by this process."9

When researchers have looked at how much goes in at the start, celery-cured products appear to deliver less than conventional ones. That doesn't tell you much about the finished product, because only 50 to 70 percent of the nitrite added at the start is recoverable afterwards. Heat and the cure reactions consume most of it.

Celery-cured products appear to deliver roughly 50 to 74 ppm nitrite-equivalent going in, against a conventional working range of 120 to 156 ppm.11

So the useful evidence is what's left in the finished meat. The largest published survey tested 470 US meat products across five cities and found "generally, there were no differences in NO₂⁻ concentrations between" conventional and naturally cured product categories.12

A smaller commercial sample found a different picture, not on the averages but on the range. Naturally cured brands showed "greater upper limits for residual nitrite and nitrate," with some individual products running considerably higher than any of the conventional controls.11 That paper also notes that some manufacturers appeared to have modified their processes or ingredients to push nitrate higher.

The survey of 470 products was Nuñez de González et al. (2012). The commercial sample showing the wider upper range was Sullivan (2011).

The honest answer, then, is that the averages come out about the same, and the top of the celery-cured range runs higher with no regulatory mechanism to prevent it.

There is no published data on what's left in the finished meat for celery-cured jerky or beef sticks specifically. Claims in either direction about that subcategory are not supported by the current literature.

The ceiling problem

There is a legal limit on how much synthetic nitrite can go into a beef stick. There is no legal limit on how much celery powder can.

That is the part worth knowing, and it is a regulatory fact, not a chemistry argument.

Synthetic sodium nitrite is an approved curing agent under 9 CFR 424.21(c). Because it's approved for that purpose, the limits in FSIS Directive 7620.3 apply to it directly, both on how much goes in and on what's left in the finished product.

For ground products like beef sticks the limit is 156 parts per million (ppm) going in. Bacon is capped at 120 ppm and requires a mandatory 550 ppm of cure accelerator (ascorbate or erythorbate). There's a 200 ppm ceiling on what's left in the finished product as well.13

Celery powder is not an approved curing agent. It enters the formulation under a different category, as a flavoring or as something that slows bacteria. Because the caps in 9 CFR 424.21(c) attach to the named synthetics and their approved purpose, those caps never attach to celery-delivered nitrate. There is no limit on how much goes in, and no finished-product limit that applies through the curing-agent rules.

USDA does publish floors for natural cures as guidance, at least 100 ppm nitrite-equivalent plus 250 ppm ascorbate for Clostridium botulinum control. Guidance floors are not regulatory ceilings.

In 2019, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Consumer Reports filed a petition asking FSIS to regulate nitrate and nitrite from natural sources the same way it regulates synthetic additions.14 FSIS partially granted it in December 2020 and stated it "intends to" approve non-synthetic sources as curing agents, future tense, conceding they are not now regulated as such. As of this writing, the rule has not come.

That rulemaking was bundled into RIN 0583-AD88. It does not appear in the 2026 Unified Agenda. The European Union took a different structural approach: Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/2108 caps nitrite from all sources, both added and residual, source-neutral by design.15 The US has not done that.

This is the part the marketing doesn't tell you. The synthetic version has a published ceiling backed by enforcement. The celery version has a floor backed by guidance, and no cap at all. Same molecule; one is capped and counted, the other isn't.1

A ceiling only matters if you're putting something underneath it. That is the part of this I find easy to sit out.

Nitrates aren't villains

Most of the nitrate anyone eats comes from vegetables, and at those levels the evidence on it is positive.

Vegetables account for roughly 76 to 80 percent of the total nitrate the average person consumes.16 Nitrate added as a food additive accounts for about 2 percent of total exposure.17 Processed meat contributes about 0.2 percent of the daily limit health agencies set for nitrate (the acceptable daily intake, or ADI).18

The central irony is that the molecule the meat industry is trying to move away from is one of the more beneficial molecules in a salad. The maximum nitrite that can go into a beef stick under the synthetic curing rules is 156 ppm, which works out to about 15.6 mg per 100 grams of product. A handful of arugula delivers thirty times that as nitrate from the field.

Arugula runs about 4,677 mg nitrate per kilogram fresh weight, so a 100-gram serving delivers roughly 468 mg, approximately 1.8 times the entire daily limit EFSA sets for an average adult.19 The DASH diet, which is specifically prescribed to lower blood pressure, has been modeled at up to 1,222 mg nitrate per day, more than five times that daily limit.16

The reason nitrate from vegetables is beneficial and not a source of concern is the nitric-oxide pathway. The same conversion that cures meat in a formulation also happens in your body. Dietary nitrate is concentrated in saliva, reduced to nitrite by oral bacteria, swallowed, and then converted to nitric oxide in the bloodstream and tissues, where it widens blood vessels.

Across sixteen trials, inorganic nitrate supplementation lowered systolic blood pressure by roughly 4.4 mmHg on average, with a stronger effect in hypertensive patients.20 A four-week trial using 250 mL of beetroot juice daily in hypertensive patients found reductions closer to 7.7 mmHg systolic.21

These cardiovascular findings are from dietary-nitrate studies (vegetables and nitrate supplements, not cured meat). They describe the molecule, not the food matrix. I'm not making a claim about what eating beef sticks does to your blood pressure.

Why curing matters

Nitrite became standard in cured meat for one reason, and that reason is botulism.

The organism responsible, Clostridium botulinum, was identified in 1895 from a smoked ham outbreak in Belgium. The disease itself had been documented since at least 1820, when Kerner catalogued 76 cases of what he called sausage poison (botulus is Latin for sausage).22

The way nitric oxide kills the organism is specific. It disables the enzymes the bacteria need to make energy, so the cell can't power itself and dies. USDA authorized nitrite in cured meats in 1925, and the technology substantially reduced botulism cases in cured products over the following decades.

How much nitrite is needed depends on the product. It is genuinely load-bearing in wet, sealed products that can be temperature-abused. In dry fermented sausage the picture is different, and the acidity, the drying and the competing bacteria carry more of the safety burden.

Hospital et al. (2016) found no botulinum toxin in nitrate/nitrite-free dry fermented sausages and concluded that pH, water activity and competitive microbiota carry more of the safety load in that format.23

Curing is a preservation technology that existed before refrigeration, before vacuum sealing, and before anyone understood the microbiology. It deserves credit as one of the more consequential public-health tools in food history, independent of any debate about synthetic versus celery-derived sources.

Curing without it

We cure with apple cider vinegar and salt. Nothing we put in is a nitrate or nitrite source.

The traditional alternative to nitrite curing, and the one behind air-dried biltong, is hurdle technology, which means stacking several preservation steps so that no single one has to be extreme enough to stress the product or the consumer. Salt, acid and air-drying each take away something the bacteria need. Together they clear the pathogen bar without nitrite.

The growth thresholds for C. botulinum Group I (the heat-stable type) are pH above 4.6, water activity above 0.94, salt below 10 percent, and temperature above 10°C. The cold-tolerant Group II needs pH above 5.0 and water activity above 0.97 to grow.24 Water activity is how much free water is left for bacteria to use.

Drop enough of those below threshold and the organism can't establish. That has been tested on this exact format.

A 2022 study by Gavai, Karolenko and Muriana tested a biltong process using beef, vinegar, salt and spices, air-dried at 23.9°C with no cook step. The finished product achieved a five-log reduction in E. coli O157:H7 in five days, six logs for Listeria*, seven for* S. aureus*, with internal water activity reaching 0.82 and pH around 5.26. The component analysis found vinegar contributed more than salt against* Listeria specifically.25

At Farmer Bill's, the cure is apple cider vinegar and salt, air-dried in small fresh batches, on pasture-raised American beef. The full ingredients across our products are: beef, apple cider vinegar, salt, coriander, black pepper, nutmeg, allspice. The apple cider vinegar is in there for two reasons: it cures the meat and it tastes right.

Our products contain no celery in any form, no added nitrite, no cultured dextrose, and no encapsulated acids. The preservation system is the hurdle stack, not a label claim.

Worth being precise about, since precision is the whole point of this post: "no added" is not the same as "zero." Beef carries a little nitrate on its own, and so does salt. A product built with no nitrite source at all still tends to measure a trace amount.

In Sullivan's (2011) commercial survey, the one frankfurter brand made with no nitrite source whatsoever still measured about 2 ppm residual nitrite and 4.6 ppm nitrate, against conventional controls near 7 ppm. Analyses of sea salt put it at roughly 0.3 to 1.7 ppm nitrate, described in that work as insignificant for curing. We have not had our own product tested, so what I can tell you is what goes in, not a number for what is left.11

Of the eleven clean-label beef stick brands we checked, nine use celery-derived curing. Of four air-dried biltong brands checked, none do. Vinegar and salt is simply how this format works.

There's a visible tell, and it's the reason celery powder exists as an ingredient at all. The pink in cured meat is nitrite reacting with the muscle. Ours doesn't have it. Air-dried beef goes dark, because nothing was added to hold the colour.

Whether that makes it better for you is not a claim I'm going to make, and everything above is why. What I'll say is that it's the older method, it's a shorter list, and it doesn't need anyone to win the argument first. Salt, acid, air and time were doing this long before we had a name for the chemistry, and they still work.

If you want to see what a short label with no added nitrite looks like, our beef sticks and the rest of our air-dried lineup are the practical demonstration. The label is short because the ingredient list is short.

Reading the label

If any of these words are on the ingredient list, the product was cured, whatever the front of the pack says.

The terms cycle through, but they all point to the same underlying process. Any of the following on a beef stick or cured meat label means the product has been cured with a vegetable-derived or bacterial source of nitrite:

  • Celery powder
  • Celery juice powder
  • Cultured celery powder
  • Cultured celery juice
  • Cherry powder
  • Encapsulated lactic acid
  • Encapsulated citric acid
  • Cultured dextrose (often paired with the above)

When any of those ingredients appear in a product also labeled "Uncured" or "No Nitrate or Nitrite Added," FSIS policy requires the qualifier: "except for those naturally occurring in [ingredient]." That qualifier is the tell.

If the product says "No Nitrate or Nitrite Added" with no qualifier, look harder at the ingredient list. The qualifier is supposed to be there if a vegetable source is in the formulation.

A product with none of those ingredients, labeled "Uncured," might actually be uncured in the functional sense. Or it might be using a different mechanism. The ingredient list is the only way to tell, and a short ingredient list is the honest signal.

You can read more about what goes into a clean beef stick on our are beef sticks healthy breakdown, or check our biltong vs jerky piece if you want the fuller picture on what air-drying actually does differently.

Frequently Asked Questions

The short version: "uncured" means cured with celery, and celery carries no legal limit.

What does "uncured" actually mean on a meat label?

"Uncured" is a federally required label term for any meat product that would normally carry a cured identity but was made without an approved synthetic curing agent. The regulation (9 CFR 319.2 and 317.17) compels the word.

It does not mean the product was not cured in practice. The vast majority of products labeled "uncured" are cured with a vegetable-derived source of nitrate, most commonly celery powder, that converts to nitrite in the meat through bacterial action. The label is accurate under the regulatory definition and misleading under the plain English one.

Does uncured meat have nitrates or nitrites?

Almost always yes, when the product uses celery powder, cultured celery juice, cherry powder, or similar vegetable-based curing agents. Those ingredients are high in nitrate. Bacteria in the meat convert that nitrate to nitrite during fermentation or curing.

The finished product contains nitrite derived from those sources. FSIS requires the label to note "except for those naturally occurring in [ingredient]" as a qualifier to the "No Nitrate or Nitrite Added" statement, per FSIS training materials rather than CFR language. The absence of that qualifier on a product using vegetable-based curing would be a labeling problem.

Is uncured meat healthier than cured meat?

There's no evidence to support that conclusion, and ANSES (2022) specifically found that "no nitrite added" products still contain hidden nitrates and nitrites from vegetable sources. IARC's Q&A on processed meat states there is not enough information to rank risk between types of processed meat. The category classification applies regardless of whether the nitrite came from a bag of sodium nitrite or from celery powder. The label difference is regulatory, not a health distinction.

Is celery powder a nitrate source?

Yes. Celery is one of the more concentrated dietary sources of nitrate, running roughly 1,100 to 1,500 mg per kilogram fresh weight. Celery juice powder is more concentrated still, at roughly 27,000 ppm nitrate.

When used as a curing agent in meat, a bacterial starter culture converts that nitrate to nitrite, which then performs the same curing function as synthetic sodium nitrite. The regulatory distinction is that celery powder is not an approved curing agent, so the limits on how much synthetic nitrite can go in don't apply to celery-delivered nitrate.

Why doesn't USDA regulate celery-based curing the same way?

Because celery powder and similar vegetable sources are not approved as curing agents under 9 CFR 424.21(c). They enter meat formulations as flavoring ingredients, or as something that slows bacteria.

The limits for sodium nitrite attach to its use as an approved curing agent. Since celery powder holds a different regulatory status, those limits never attach to it. CSPI and Consumer Reports petitioned FSIS in 2019 to close this gap. FSIS partially granted the petition and said it intends to approve natural sources as curing agents, but as of 2026 that rulemaking has not been finalized and does not appear in the current Unified Agenda.

Are nitrates bad for you?

The molecule is complicated and the internet usually picks a side. Nitrate from vegetables is roughly 76 to 80 percent of what most people consume, and the same nitrate-to-nitrite-to-nitric-oxide conversion that cures meat in a formulation also happens in your body from dietary sources.

Clinical evidence associates inorganic nitrate from vegetables with modest blood pressure reductions. The cardiovascular literature is on the positive side at dietary levels. Cured meat as a food matrix sits in a different epidemiological picture, with IARC's Group 1 classification and modest absolute risk increases in long-term high-consumption data. Those are different questions about the same molecule in different contexts.

What is cultured celery powder, and is it different from regular celery powder?

Cultured celery powder is celery juice or powder that has been fermented with a bacterial starter culture before being added to the meat, so the nitrate-to-nitrite conversion happens in the ingredient rather than in the meat itself. The resulting product is higher in nitrite and lower in nitrate than raw celery powder. The functional outcome in the meat is essentially the same: the product is cured with nitrite. Cultured celery powder is a way for formulators to have more control over the conversion, since they don't have to rely on bacterial activity in the meat itself to drive the process.

How do you cure meat without nitrite or celery powder?

Hurdle technology works by stacking multiple preservation mechanisms so that no single one needs to be extreme. Salt reduces how much free water is left for bacteria to use (water activity), which limits microbial growth. Acid (apple cider vinegar in our case) lowers pH, which further inhibits pathogens. Air-drying removes moisture over time, dropping the available water further still.

A 2022 biltong validation study found that a vinegar-salt-spice-air-drying process with no cook step achieved five-log reductions for E. coli O157:H7 and six logs for Listeria, with water activity finishing at 0.82 and pH around 5.26. The mechanism is well-documented food science. It's also how biltong has been made for centuries.

How can I tell if a product is actually free of added nitrate and nitrite?

Read the ingredient list. If you see celery powder, celery juice, cultured celery, cultured celery juice, cherry powder, encapsulated lactic acid, encapsulated citric acid, or cultured dextrose, the product has been cured with a vegetable-derived nitrite source.

The "Uncured / No Nitrate or Nitrite Added" label should carry a qualifier noting the vegetable source. If the ingredient list is genuinely free of those items, and the product uses salt, acid, and drying as its preservation system, it may actually be nitrite-free. A short, simple ingredient list is the clearest signal.

Does "no preservatives" mean a product has no preservatives?

Not usually. Salt is a preservative. Vinegar is a preservative. Drying is a preservation mechanism, because it takes away the free water bacteria need.

"No preservatives" on a cured meat label typically means no added chemical preservatives beyond what the regulation considers natural. The more honest phrasing is "no added chemical preservatives," or simply naming what's actually in the product. At Farmer Bill's, the honest version is: salt and apple cider vinegar, which are both traditional preservatives, combined with air-drying.

Sources

  1. FSIS, Further Processing and Labeling Inspection Course, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, November 2021, pp. 49–50. View
  2. Crowe, W., Elliott, C.T., and Green, B.D., A Review of the In Vivo Evidence Investigating the Role of Nitrite Exposure from Processed Meat Consumption in the Development of Colorectal Cancer, Nutrients 11(11):2673, 2019. View
  3. Chazelas, E., Pierre, F., Druesne-Pecollo, N., Esseddik, Y., Szabo de Edelenyi, F., Agaesse, C., De Sa, A., Lutchia, R., Gigandet, S., Srour, B., Debras, C., Huybrechts, I., Julia, C., Kesse-Guyot, E., Allès, B., Galan, P., Hercberg, S., Deschasaux-Tanguy, M., and Touvier, M., Nitrites and Nitrates from Food Additives and Natural Sources and Cancer Risk: Results from the NutriNet-Santé Cohort, International Journal of Epidemiology 51(4):1106–1119, 2022. View
  4. Srour, B., Chazelas, E., Fezeu, L.K., Javaux, G., Pierre, F., Huybrechts, I., Debras, C., Druesne-Pecollo, N., Esseddik, Y., Szabo de Edelenyi, F., Agaësse, C., De Sa, A., Lutchia, R., Julia, C., Kesse-Guyot, E., Allès, B., Galan, P., Hercberg, S., Deschasaux-Tanguy, M., and Touvier, M., Dietary Exposure to Nitrites and Nitrates in Association with Type 2 Diabetes Risk: Results from the NutriNet-Santé Population-Based Cohort Study, PLOS Medicine 20(1):e1004149, 2023. View
  5. Rizzolo-Brime, L., Ruiz-Moreno, E., Palau-Rodriguez, M., and Tulipani, S. et al., Nitrosyl-Heme and Colorectal Cancer Risk in the EPIC Cohort, Nutrition Journal 25:14, 2025. View
  6. Cross, A.J., Freedman, N.D., Ren, J., Ward, M.H., Hollenbeck, A.R., Schatzkin, A., Sinha, R., and Abnet, C.C., Meat Consumption and Colorectal Cancer Risk: A Prospective Study of American Adults, Cancer Prevention Research 3(12):1424–1434, 2010. View
  7. International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Volume 114: Red Meat and Processed Meat, WHO Press, Lyon, 2018. View
  8. Chan, D.S.M., Lau, R., Aune, D., Vieira, R., Greenwood, D.C., Kampman, E., and Norat, T., Red and Processed Meat and Colorectal Cancer Incidence: Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies, PLOS ONE 6(6):e20456, 2011; absolute risk framing from Cancer Research UK science communications. View
  9. Sebranek, J.G. and Bacus, J.N., Cured Meat Products Without Direct Addition of Nitrate or Nitrite: What Are the Issues?, Meat Science 77(1):136–147, 2007. View
  10. McKeith, F.K., reviewed in Sebranek, J.G. and Sindelar, J.J., Natural and Organic Meat and Poultry, American Meat Science Association, 2014. View
  11. Sullivan, G.A., Jackson-Davis, A.L., Niebuhr, S.E., Xi, Y., Schricker, B.R., and Sebranek, J.G., Comparison of Natural Cure and Conventional Cure Frankfurters, Ham, and Bacon, Journal of Food Science 77(2):M67–M71, 2011. View
  12. Nuñez de González, M.T., Osburn, W.N., Hardin, M.D., Longnecker, M., Garg, H.K., Bryan, N.S., and Keeton, J.T., Survey of Residual Nitrite and Nitrate in Conventional and Organic/Natural/Uncured/Indirectly Cured Meats Available at Retail in the United States, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 60(15):3981–3990, 2012. View
  13. FSIS, FSIS Directive 7620.3, Attachment I, Table II: Ingoing Nitrite and Nitrate Limits, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. View; see also 9 CFR 424.21(c) and 424.22(b).
  14. Center for Science in the Public Interest and Consumer Reports, Citizen Petition CSPI 19-03 to FSIS Regarding Nitrate and Nitrite in Uncured Meat Products, filed August 29, 2019; partially granted December 10, 2020. View
  15. European Commission, Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/2108 of 10 October 2023 Amending Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 as Regards the Use of Nitrites (E 249–250) and Nitrates (E 251–252) as Food Additives, Official Journal of the European Union, 2023. View
  16. Hord, N.G., Tang, Y., and Bryan, N.S., Food Sources of Nitrates and Nitrites: The Physiologic Context for Potential Health Benefits, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 90(1):1–10, 2009. View
  17. EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources Added to Food, Re-evaluation of Potassium Nitrite (E 249) and Sodium Nitrite (E 250) as Food Additives, EFSA Journal 15(6):4786, 2017. View
  18. Karwowska, M. and Kononiuk, A., Nitrates/Nitrites in Food (Risk for Nitrosative Stress and Benefits), Antioxidants 9(3):241, 2020. View
  19. EFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain, Nitrate in Vegetables: Scientific Opinion, EFSA Journal 6(4):689, 2008; nitrate concentration data from Santamaria, P., Nitrate in Vegetables: Toxicity, Content, Intake and EC Regulation, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 86(1):10–17, 2006. View
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