A lot of jerky on the shelf owes its long shelf life (and that unnaturally pink colour) to nitrites or nitrates. Why? They’re cheap, and they’re fast. They’re also still used by plenty of brands, sometimes even dressed up as “natural” curing agents like celery powder.
At Byron Jerky, we’ve never used them, and we’re not about to start.
What nitrites actually do
Nitrites and nitrates are preservatives commonly added to processed meats to extend the shelf life and keep the meat looking fresh and pink for longer. The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen largely because of compounds that preservatives can form during digestion. It’s one of the better-established links in nutrition science, and it’s a big part of why “nitrite-free” has become something shoppers actively look for on a label.
By the way – we’re not doctors, and this isn’t medical advice. If you want the full picture, the WHO and IARC have published their findings directly. Read the research and make your own decisions. This is simply what we do about it.
How to spot nitrites on a label
Nitrites don’t always appear under their own name. Look out for sodium nitrite, potassium nitrate, and “natural” stand-ins like celery powder, celery juice extract or cultured celery, as these still deliver nitrates to the meat; they’ve just been sourced from a vegetable instead of a lab. In fact, if an ingredients list includes something described as a “curing agent” or “vegetable-derived preservative” without saying exactly what it is, that’s usually worth a second look.
Byron Jerky’s ingredients list doesn’t need that kind of reading between the lines. We use beef, salt, spices, and whatever’s in the marinade. That’s it.
How we get around them
We don’t need nitrites, because we don’t take the shortcuts they’re there to cover for. Byron Jerky gets its shelf life the old way: slow air-drying. Pull enough moisture out of a well-salted, well-seasoned strip of beef, and you don’t need a chemical preservative to keep it safe, as the low moisture content itself is what makes the product shelf-stable.
It’s the same principle that’s kept cured, dried meats safe for centuries, long before refrigeration ever existed.
Salt does double duty here. It seasons, but it also draws moisture out of the meat and makes the environment inhospitable for the bacteria that spoilage (and nitrites) are usually there to guard against. Combined with a properly controlled drying environment, that’s more than enough to get a safe, stable, shelf-ready product without reaching for a chemical shortcut.
That means every pack of Byron Jerky is:
- Nitrite and nitrate-free, including the “natural” versions
- Free from artificial preservatives
- Made from nothing but real Australian grass-fed beef, honest spices, and time
We take the same approach across our whole range, too. Our biltong is made using the same traditional, nitrite-free air-drying method, just with its own spice profile. It’s good to know that if it’s got the Byron Jerky name on it, the promise and the standard don’t change from pack to pack.
You can see and taste the difference
Nitrite-cured meat keeps an artificial pink or reddish colour, even well past when it would naturally have browned. Byron Jerky doesn’t. You’ll notice our meats are a deeper, more natural brown, because that’s genuinely what air-dried beef looks like without a chemical holding the colour in place. The texture’s different too: nitrite curing tends to keep meat softer and slightly springy, where slow air-drying gives you a firmer, more honest chew.
So remember – if a piece of jerky still looks bright pink after weeks on a shelf, that’s not freshness. It’s chemistry.
Why it’s worth the extra effort
Air-drying takes longer than curing with nitrites. It’s less forgiving, and it costs more. But it also means what you’re chewing on is beef, not beef plus a preservative plus whatever else keeps mass-produced jerky “fresh” for a year on a warehouse shelf.
Our founders Melissa and Graham put it simply. They wouldn’t make food for you that they wouldn’t feed their own kids. This means that nitrite-free is a non-negotiable for us, and it’s how we’ve always made it.
The bottom line
Not all jerky is made the same way, and the ingredients list is where that shows up first. Byron Jerky is nitrite-free, gluten-free, made from 100% Australian grass-fed beef, and air-dried in the Byron Bay hinterland. It’s real beef, real flavour, real good.
Wanna try it for yourself? Shop our range of Byron Jerky today.
