Abstract: Two pretreatment methods including soaking at room temperature and steam distillation were comparatively evaluated for their effectiveness in determining formaldehyde content in different types of smoked meat products from different producing areas. The results showed that steam distillation was superior to soaking at room temperature in terms of spike recovery, relative standard deviation and limit of detection.In addition, high formaldehyde content in traditionally smoked meat products was detected. The content of formaldehyde was 21－124 mg/kg in the surface and 8－22 mg/kg in the inner part of smoked meat products.

Key words: smoked meat products, formaldehyde, methodology, recovery rate, detection limit