The The sanitary policy of the Health and Family Ministry pays a great attention to the concept of “food safety”, according to the relating policy of the European Community. Food safety includes a minute pursuit of the products on their entire track, from the producer, to the consumer (“from farm, to fork”). Our study followed the physical-chemical characteristics of samples of these products and evaluated the results obtained at salubrity tests carried out in units of production and retail of meat products.
We used data delivered in 2008 by the territorial public health authorities, data concerning salubrity tests made in meat production and retail units, additives found in meat products and their physical chemical characteristics.
After monitoring the sanitation conditions in meat production and retail units, the results showed that all of them were in accord with the norms. Most of the plants have implemented HACCP system. Regarding the salubrity tests, from the 943 specimens, 12.8% were inadequate. It’s worth to underline that 15.7% of the inadequate samples originated on the hands of the workers, showing the low level of hygiene knowledge and the low respect for hygiene rules. From the point of view of the physical-chemical tests, some samples were over the advised values for water content ( maximal in summer salami – 36% of the samples), fat content(maximal for sausages – 10% of the samples) and salt( sausages -11,1% of the samples); other samples are below the suitable protein content (the lowest: for summer salami). The protein value was still low, even if the manufacturers add vegetal protein during processing, because the collagen/protein ratio goes beyond the suitable one (maximal number of samples: summer salami).
We recommend to the producers to respect the normative concerning each meat product and to improve of the nutritional vale of the products, by growing the quantity of meat included in cold cuts and by lowering the quantity of connective tissues, water and fats used in the fabrication processes.
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