Russian companies are reported to be increasingly using a food additive that is banned in the country—"meat glue" or transglutaminase—to cut production costs.
rofl how do those sanctions taste ruzzians??
Transglutaminase was also banned by the European Union in 2010
It has been banned for use in food production in Russia since 2020
It is still permitted for use in the United States.
Meat glue (Transglutaminase) is a heavily used food additive in the US and is GRAS (generally recognized as saf). Manufacturers don't need to report in their ingredients because supposedly the enzyme deactivates when it heats up. I was playing around with it in bread making to increase the amount of gluten in bagels. I stopped when I read some research papers that the health effects were not clearly understood and some people have raised some alarm bells that it might not be.
We covered this in class once... The reason why it's allowed in the US and forbidden in Europe is because the burden of proof works differently: in the US everything is allowed until you prove a food additive is harmful, while in Europe anything that's not been proven to be 100% safe cannot be added to food, because food policy in the EU is supposed to follow a precautionary principle.