It depends on what you're doing with them and how you're preparing them. I makes LOTS of sausages with zero nitrates. But they aren't smoked and they aren't dry-cured/dry-aged. If you want to avoid them, the trade off is Russian roulette with botulism. The word "botulism" has its Latin root in the "botulus" - which means "sausage". They managed to make a connection between the disease and the consumption of sausages. Basically, if you want to avoid nitrites/nitrates, then don't have your sausage in the "danger zone" - anaerobic conditions (which the sausage creates by its very creation) between 40-140 degrees (which is common in smoker conditions and in dry curing/aging conditions). You can hot smoke sausages without nitrites/nitrates, but even then they spend enough time in the danger zone to potentially allow growth of Clostridium Botulinum, which produces the botulinum toxin, which will really mess you up. I have the autoimmune neuromuscular disease whose acute attack symptoms mimic botulism (myasthenia gravis). Trust me, you don't want to contract botulism or experience the symptoms. I do all of my own meat processing and make a lot of sausage - fresh, cured, smoked, etc. Use the curing salts to prevent botulism. It's not worth the risk to NOT use them unless you are a professional and have the facilities and education and training to know how to monitor and control pH and active water in the sausages without cure.
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Great response.
