The fuzziness here is because nitrates and nitrites are both used for meat curing, and the way the nitrate works is by being turned into the nitrite by bacterial action during the cure. Any nitrate that remains in the end product may then be turned into nitrite by gut bacteria. So from a food safety perspective they are really interchangeable. Current regulations in the US allow products made with organic nitrates to be labelled as "uncured" even though the end product would contain nitrites.