摘要：Nitrites and nitrates are used as curing agents in meat products and they are very important not only as preservatives, but also for color and flavor formation. They are growth inhibitors of Clostridium botulinum. N-nitrosamines are carcinogenic and toxic compounds that can occur in meat and meat products as the reaction product of nitrite with proteins of meat after the meat or meat products were added nitrites, and nitrates as preservatives. N-nitrosamines’ harm has been proved in many scientific papers published over the last 30-odd years, and therefore requires a constant systematic control of the presence of N-nitrosamines since meat and meat products as the main source of proteins form a large share of food to the adult population and children. In the Republic of Croatia, such control is not implemented, as well as in the previous legislation there was not prescribed a maximum allowable concentration (MAC). Identification and quantification of sodium nitrites and nitrates were done by High Performance Liquid Chromatography-HPLC with DAD detector series 1200 (Agilent). The presence of N-nitrosamines was determined by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry system (GC-MS-SIM). The obtained results were ranging from 0.0001 mg/kg to 0.0099 mg/kg.
