It was demonstrated that recovery increases as the meat solids
decreases (Usher & Telling, 1975). Hence using smaller meat samples
should reduce the effects of interfering substances, which was
demonstrated in this study (Table 2). Furthermore, most interference
can be eliminated by UV detection. However, chloride ions
maybe detected by UV as positive or negative peaks in the wavelength
used for nitrate and nitrite and are eluted before nitrite
(Di Matteo & Esposito, 1997). Chloride peaks were not present at
214 nm in this study, which suggests that chloride ions did not
interfere with nitrite quantification since nitrite recovery was
above 92% for both meat and vegetable samples (Tables 1 and 2).