Factors affecting levels of PAH in smoked meat products

摘要

In the last years, more studies have been undertaken about the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in food, then with factors affecting that contamination. The present work, intended to proceedings which could improve the effect of fat content, casing type and smoking procedures on the PAH prevalence of a dry/fermented cured meat product. Dry fermented sausages were manufactured according to the traditional processing style. Besides fat content variation (10% and 40%), two casing types (tripe and collagen) and two smoking procedures were also tested. The drying stage occurred in an environmental controlled chamber and smoking operation took place during approximately 4 hours/day by direct vs. indirect exposure in a chamber strictly prepared for this purpose. The 16 PAH referred as priority by EPA, were determined by HPLC-UV/Vis-FLD. Total amounts of the 16 PAH ranged between 147 and 870 μg.kg~(-1), where the light PAH were the most abundant. For the identified carcinogenic PAH, the highest contamination was 10.8 μg.kg"1. However none of the samples revealed contaminations above 5 μg.kg~(-1) (established EU level) for benzo[a]pyrene (BaP). Regardless of the fat content and smoking procedure, samples with collagen casing showed lowest contamination levels. For those made in tripe casing, the lowest PAH content was found in samples with low fat formulation and indirect smoking conditions. The manufacturing practices studied in this work revealed to be effective in minimizing the PAH contamination, contributing to healthier and safer dry smoked meat products.