FAQs
Q: How long will your meat snacks last?
A: Each of our products is stamped with a best used by date directly on the film. Please consume all Vermont Smoke & Cure products before the best used by date.
Q: What common allergens are present in your products and facility?
A: Our entire facility and all of our products are free from the following: gluten, tree nuts, peanuts, dairy, eggs, MSG, fish and shellfish. Vermont Smoke & Cure utilizes a controlled system to manage allergens to prevent potential cross-contamination. This allergen control program is part of our food safety system, which is audited annually by a 3rd party certifier for SQF, an approved Global Food Safety Initiative code.
Our allergy control program depends upon segregation of allergen ingredients, products and processes from non-allergen or other allergen containing products, with verified cleaning procedures between lots in equipment and facilities.
Q: Do your products contain nitrates?
A: All of our products have no nitrates or nitrites added, except for nitrates naturally occurring in celery juice powder and sea salt.
Q: Why is sugar on the ingredients list for some products that contain 0g of sugar?
A: Each of our meat sticks contain 0 to 1 gram of sugar when the production process is complete.
Sugar plays an important role in fermenting our meat sticks and summer sausage, however. During the fermentation process, sugar is consumed by a specific type of culture (bacteria), this bacteria converts the sugar into lactic acid, which lowers the acidity (pH) of the meat stick. To stop the fermentation, we either chill or cook the product. Nutrition fact testing shows that the lactic acid starter culture bacteria consume essentially all of the sugar during this process for our summer sausage, smoked pepperoni and meat sticks.
Combined with cooking, drying, chilling quickly, and vacuum packaging, reducing the pH through the use of sugar and lactic acid starter culture helps naturally preserve our summer sausage, smoked pepperoni and meat sticks.
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