Terms of use

The agreement

By using curedmeat.com you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, do not use the site. They apply to every page, including the calculators.

What this site provides

A reference. It reproduces and indexes published material from the US Code of Federal Regulations, from guidance documents issued by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, from the European Commission's register of geographical indications and from USDA FoodData Central. It computes conversions and ratios from those figures and shows the working.

What it is not

It is not advice, of any kind. Not food safety advice, not regulatory advice, not legal advice and not medical advice. It is not a HACCP plan, a validation, a process authority letter or a substitute for any of those. It does not create a professional relationship of any kind between you and the operator of this site.

It is not a certification. Nothing on this site certifies that a product, a process or an establishment complies with anything.

Food safety in particular

This site will never tell you that a preparation is safe, and you must not read it as having done so. Curing meat creates the conditions - anaerobic, low acid, ambient temperature - in which Clostridium botulinum produces a neurotoxin, and creates opportunities for Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella, shiga-toxin producing E. coli and, in pork, Trichinella spiralis.

A parameter published here describes what a source says controls a hazard under stated conditions. Whether your product met that parameter is a question about your product, which can only be answered by measuring it. Water activity is measured with an instrument. pH is measured with an instrument. Neither can be inferred from a recipe, a weight loss percentage or an appearance, and this site does not offer a way to do so.

If you are producing meat products for sale, you are subject to the regulations themselves and to the requirements of your inspection authority. Read the sources this site links to, not this site.

Accuracy and sources

Figures are parsed from published sources by scripts described on methodology, with a retrieval date shown on each page. Regulations are amended and guidance is reissued. A figure here is a figure as it stood on the stated date, and the source is the authority, not this site's copy of it.

Known gaps are recorded on corrections. If you find an error, report it; it will be fixed and logged.

Prohibited uses

• Presenting content from this site as a regulatory approval, a validation, a certification or a compliance document.
• Removing the citation or the retrieval date from a figure taken from this site and republishing the bare number.
• Automated collection at a rate that degrades the site for other readers. Ordinary search and answer-engine crawling is welcome and is explicitly allowed in the robots file.
• Anything unlawful, or anything intended to interfere with the operation of the site.

Forms and the mailing list

There are two forms. The contact form sends a message to the operator; do not send anything through it that you would not want held in an inbox, and do not send personal information about anybody other than yourself. The newsletter form adds an address to a mailing list, and by submitting it you confirm the address is yours and consent to receiving the newsletter at it. Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link and using it ends the consent immediately.

Anything you send through either form may be used to answer you, and a correction you report may be acted on and logged on corrections without naming you. Submitting either form does not create any obligation to reply, to publish or to make a change.

Intellectual property and reuse

The underlying regulations and US federal guidance documents are US government works and are not subject to copyright in the United States. The EU register data is published by the European Commission under its own reuse terms. Neither is owned by this site.

The selection, arrangement, commentary, derivations, code and design of this site are its own. Quoting a figure with attribution is fine and encouraged. Wholesale reproduction of the site's pages or bulk copying of its derived datasets is not.

Third party links

Links to eCFR, FSIS, eAmbrosia, EUR-Lex, FoodData Central and Amazon lead to sites this one does not control and is not responsible for. Affiliate links are disclosed on disclosures and labelled where they appear.

Disclaimer of warranties

This site is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy or non-infringement. No warranty is given that the site will be uninterrupted, that it will be error free, or that any figure on it currently matches its source.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the operator of this site is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising from your use of or reliance on this site. This includes any loss or harm arising from food you prepared, sold or consumed.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify the operator of this site against claims arising from your breach of these terms or from your use of the site in a way these terms prohibit.

Commercial features

This site is operated commercially. It carries affiliate links, described on disclosures, and it may introduce further commercial features: advertising, sponsorship, sponsored placement outside the reference material, paid products, subscriptions or partnerships. Where a page carries a commercial relationship it is labelled at the point of use, and the disclosures page is kept current with what those relationships are.

One thing is structural rather than a promise about the future: a commercial relationship does not change what a regulation says or which figure this site prints. The parameters come from the sources named on methodology and are not for sale, and the hazard and safety pages carry no commercial link.

Changes and availability

These terms may change. The date at the top of the page is the notice. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the revised terms.

The site, any part of it, and any feature of it may be changed, restricted, moved behind a registration or a charge, or discontinued, at any time and without notice. Nothing here is a commitment to keep any page, dataset, calculator or URL available.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict of law rules, and the courts of New York have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, subject to any mandatory consumer protection provisions of your own jurisdiction.

Contact

Through the contact form, which is the only route in. No email address is published on this site.