Over the last few years, the clean-label movement has advanced from its fledgling roots to become de rigueur in global food and beverage production, and the result has been a total redefining of the rules of the game. Increasingly, consumers are both aware of and actively seeking products with cleaner, shorter labels (i.e., fewer “chemical” names that they perceive as potentially unsafe, unhealthy or of low quality). Addressing these accelerating demands is a challenge that can present financial risk for food producers, while ignoring them is simply no longer an option for companies that wish to survive and prosper.
Nowhere are these challenges greater than in meat production, where food safety is subject to widespread concerns around both health and cost. Coming to the rescue today—and being warmly welcomed by manufacturers looking to meet demand and avoid unnecessary safety and financial risk—are clean-label advances that work to protect and enhance meat quality and shelf life.
These days, food safety is top of mind around the world. A recent, extensive Kerry Cleaner Label survey of consumer attitudes in the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region on the subject of safety, health, and the environment found that the top six clean-label concerns in these areas all related to food safety. As one of the largest consumers of meat products in the world, it’s the same in Latin America, where 90 percent of respondents in a recent Kerry survey consider it important that products be made from clean ingredients. In that region, consumers also consider a clean label to be closely related to product nutrition.
The U.S. and Europe are not immune to safety concerns. A couple of recent examples help explain the global nature of this public concern. In the fall of 2019, Listeria outbreaks in Belgium and the Netherlands were linked to cold charcuterie and in the U.S., a November 2019 outbreak of Salmonella from raw beef left one person dead and eight in hospital across six states.
More recently, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has led to consumer stockpiling food and switching to home cooking from eating out, which has disrupted supply chains and restaurant practices. It has also focused public attention on meat safety practices globally.
Until relatively recently, chemical preservatives were the best food safety solution and, arguably, were responsible for many of the food safety advances of the 20th century. Today, however, the most important clean-label consumer desire around meat and fish globally is a call for no artificial additives or preservatives. This has led to a search for clean-label solutions to address the public’s opposition to chemical preservatives without sacrificing the safety or quality of the products. It is a significant challenge, but one that is being successfully addressed.
Nitrites and Nitrates Are Vilified
In the U.S. and Europe particularly, sodium nitrates and nitrites, used as preservatives, are vilified due to their links to colon cancer and other health issues. According to one Kerry research report entitled The Top Consumer No-No Ingredients for Meat by Generation, baby boomers and seniors aged 54 and over are more likely than millennials to reject these additives; this is important, as older adults are the largest consumers of hot dogs, sausages, and luncheon meats.
Demographics notwithstanding, food-quality concerns cut across all age groups. In fact, a full 47 percent of consumers are “label-conscious,” taking the time to read ingredient lists. Not surprisingly, the research found that they fully reject chemical preservatives as a category; interestingly, when it came to identifying ingredients that act as preservatives from a variety of product labels, all unfamiliar/chemical-sounding ingredients were vilified equally regardless of their actual makeup.
This was confirmed in a 2019 Health Focus International study of 22 countries that found that 66 percent of parents rated the absence of preservatives either “extremely important” or “very important.” All of this highlights the strength of using familiar ingredients on product labels and reinforces the need for targeted consumer education with respect to food labeling.
Amid the wholesale consumer rejection of chemical preservatives, three possible negative outcomes get an unwelcome boost: 1) an increased risk to food safety due to spoilage; 2) degradation of meat appearance and taste during shelf life; and 3) unnecessary food wastage. Currently, global food loss and waste amounts to between one-third and one-half of all food produced, with the U.S. making up some 40 percent of the total (and the highest per capita quantity of food loss) worldwide. Viewed by category, baking has the largest volume of waste, while meat has a higher overall value of waste; in fact, meat is the costliest category when it comes to any food waste. Finding natural means to protect meat and extend shelf life delivers incredible value to consumers, producers and society as a whole.