Cantonese style sausage is popular across the country as well as in its home province of Guangdong.

But the traditional food might disappear from local restaurants and dinner tables if a new food regulation goes into effect.

According to the new State Hygiene Standards for Preserved Meat, the Cantonese style sausage will fail to meet the new hygiene requirements.

If this happens, production and sale of the sausage would be suspended.

The sausage, which has a history of 1,000 years, may exceed the limits of the new hygiene standard because of its high acid and peroxide content.

The new standard is not directed exclusively at the Cantonese style sausage, but at all preserved meats, according to Liu Lishen, a senior food engineer from the Guangdong Provincial Association of Food Industry.

"We have to improve production processes and technologies to let the products meet the new hygiene standard," Liu told China Daily yesterday.

She urged sausage manufacturers throughout the province to discover the differences between the new hygiene standards and the current ones to improve the quality of their products so as to meet the new requirements.

Relevant departments should come up with new ways to preserve the existence of the Cantonese style sausage, she added.

The current hygiene standard of preserved meat was introduced in the early 1980s.

An executive manager from the Guangzhou Food Group Corporation said his company is now organizing scientific and technological personnel to study the new standards.

"We will introduce new technologies to help improve our sausages and try to get the traditional food to meet the new hygiene standards," said the manager who declined to be named.

The Guangzhou Food Group Corporation is engaged in producing four famous brands of sausage and is one of the major sausage manufacturers in Guangdong.

Its sale volume of sausages and other preserved meat usually accounts for a large portion of the province's food production.

Li Meiqun, a local housewife, said she could not accept the fact that the Cantonese style sausage would disappear from local dinner tables.

Many of her relatives and friends who are living outside Guangdong simply could not do without it, she said.

"Every year I mail sausages to my elder sister who lives in Nanjing," Li told China Daily yesterday.

The production of the Cantonese style sausage is believed to date back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).

The sausage is thought to have been introduced to the province by Arab merchants and Indian business people during that period.

But the production process is now much more sophisticated thanks to centuries of evolution.

In addition to traditional pork, the Cantonese-style sausages are also stuffed with chicken, duck, mushrooms, seafood products and vegetables. The sausage can be boiled, steamed or fried.

The new State Hygiene Standards for Preserved Meat will come into force on October 1.

(China Daily August 26, 2005)