On this day in vegan history · October 26, 2015
Bacon Joins Tobacco on the WHO's Cancer List
The world's cancer agency put your breakfast sausage in the same evidence tier as cigarettes, and the internet did not take it well.
The facts
- Date
- 26 October 2015
- Processed meat classification
- Group 1, carcinogenic to humans
- Red meat classification
- Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans
- Risk figure
- 18% higher colorectal cancer risk per 50g of processed meat eaten daily
On 26 October 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization's cancer arm, announced that a working group of 22 experts from 10 countries had reviewed more than 800 studies on meat and cancer. They classified processed meat, anything smoked, cured, salted, or preserved with chemicals, as a Group 1 carcinogen, the same category tobacco smoke and asbestos sit in because the evidence is equally strong that it causes cancer, not because it is equally dangerous. Red meat was placed in the lesser Group 2A, "probably carcinogenic," based on limited evidence. The panel's own numbers were modest: a daily 50-gram portion of processed meat, about two strips of bacon, was linked to an 18% higher risk of colorectal cancer. Headlines still ran with bacon next to cigarettes.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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In view of the large number of people who consume processed meat, the global impact on cancer incidence is of public health importance
Dr Kurt Straif, Head of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) programme responsible for the findings, 26 October 2015
Source: UN News
Why it still matters
It was the first time a UN health body put a number on what processed meat does to the body, and it handed vegans and reducetarians alike a hard-to-dismiss citation for a claim that used to sound like moralizing. The evidence didn't change eating habits overnight, but it changed what counted as a fringe opinion.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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