Health Canada has announced in the Canada Gazette that it will recommend the Canadian food and drug regulations be amended to permit the use of sodium diacetate and sodium acetate as preservatives in standardized and unstandardized preparations of meat, meat by-products, poultry meat, poultry meat by-products, prepared and preserved fish products, at a maximum level of use of 0.25 percent of final product weight.

This move allows meat processors to re-formulate ready-to-eat (RTE) products with a combination of lactate (previously approved by Health Canada) along with diacetate as an antimicrobial in certain RTE products with the primary target being the control of growth of Listeria monocytogenes. This combination of antimicrobials has been allowed in the U.S. since March 2000.