This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Bad news for bacon lovers. Processed meat, such as sausage, hot dogs, ham and bacon, was officially classified today as "carcinogenic to humans based on sufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes colorectal cancer," according to a new report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer agency of the World Health Organization.
The agency also found that the consumption of red meat, which it defines as "all types of mammalian muscle meat, such as beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse and goat," is "probably carcinogenic to humans" (classified as Group 2A). The finding is based on "limited evidence that the consumption of red meat causes cancer in humans and strong mechanistic evidence supporting a carcinogenic effect." The agency found an association between the consumption of red meat and colorectal, pancreatic and prostate cancer.
The association puts processed meat in the same ranking (Group 1) as 118 other "agents," including alcohol, asbestos, arsenic and cigarettes, that the IARC deemed as having the potential to cause cancer. There are four other classifications, Group 2A, "probably carcinogenic;" Group 2B, "possibly carcinogenic;" Group 3, "not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity;" and Group 4, "probably not carcinogenic." The IARC has classified 985 agents in total and found only one to be "probably not carcinogenic."
Experts concluded that eating just 50 grams of processed meat a day increases your risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent. “For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer because of their consumption of processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed,” says Dr. Kurt Straif, head of the IARC Monographs Program. “In view of the large number of people who consume processed meat, the global impact on cancer incidence is of public health importance.”
The IARC looked at more than 800 studies in the past 20 years that investigated an association between various cancers with the consumption of red or processed meat. The studies spanned "many countries and populations with diverse diets," according to the IARC.
"These findings further support current public health recommendations to limit intake of meat,” says Dr. Christopher Wild, director of IARC. “At the same time, red meat has nutritional value. Therefore, these results are important in enabling governments and international regulatory agencies to conduct risk assessments, in order to balance the risks and benefits of eating red meat and processed meat and to provide the best possible dietary recommendations.”
Unsurprisingly, industry groups have reacted with fury to the findings, CNBC reported. The North American Meat Institute has accused the IARC of “dramatic and alarmist over-reach."
“Red and processed meats are among 940 substances reviewed by IARC found to pose some level of theoretical ‘hazard,’" Barry Carpenter, North American Meat Institute president, told CNBC. “Only one substance, a chemical in yoga pants, has been declared by IARC not to cause cancer.”
Other organizations, such as the World Cancer Research Fund warns that there is "strong evidence that eating a lot of [red and processed meat] increases your risk of bowel cancer." And the National Healthy Society Choices' website says that "evidence shows that there is probably a link between eating red and processed meat and the risk of bowel cancer. People who eat a lot of these meats are at higher risk of bowel cancer than those who eat small amounts."
However, one expert (via The Independent), emeritus fellow at the Institute of Food Research Dr. Ian Johnson, cautions against putting the risk on the same level as that from tobacco smoke:
"Although there is epidemiological evidence for a statistically significant association between processed meat consumption and bowel cancer, it is important to emphasize that the size of the effect is relatively small, and the mechanism is poorly defined.
"It is certainly very inappropriate to suggest that any adverse effect of bacon and sausages on the risk of bowel cancer is comparable to the dangers of tobacco smoke, which is loaded with known chemical carcinogens and increases the risk of lung cancer in cigarette smokers by around 20-fold."
Friends of the Earth's senior food campaigner, Clare Oxborrow, had this to say:
"This should be a wake-up call that our diets urgently need to change. Evidence shows that high meat diets not only harm our health, they damage our environment too. Experts have warned that unless we eat less meat globally, we will fail to meet our climate change targets. Polls show that consumers are willing to eat less meat, and now this research should shake the Government into bold action. The government should do more to help people access healthy, sustainable diets, with less and better quality meat."
And David Wallinga, a physician who writes for NRDC, said the finding shows "Americans' love affair with meat" has a "supersized impact on public health." He adds, "It would not be good medicine to wait longer before strongly advising the public to eat less red meat and especially less processed meat."
"Bottom line: Eat less and better meat," says Wallinga. "Better for you, better for the planet."
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Cheese Really Is ‘Daily Crack’: New Study Reveals It’s as Addictive as Drugs
Tesla Model S Drivers Set Record-Breaking Cross Country Trip Using Autopilot Almost Entire Time
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Patrick Rogers
"I'm really into trees," said the sculptor Hugh Hayden. "I'm drawn to plants."
Last week, the Peruvian Palm Oil Producers' Association (JUNPALMA) promised to enter into an agreement for sustainable and deforestation-free palm oil production. The promise was secured by the U.S. based National Wildlife Federation (NWF) in collaboration with the local government, growers and the independent conservation organization Sociedad Peruana de Ecodesarrollo.
The rallying cry to build it again and to build it better than before is inspiring after a natural disaster, but it may not be the best course of action, according to new research published in the journal Science.
"Faced with global warming, rising sea levels, and the climate-related extremes they intensify, the question is no longer whether some communities will retreat—moving people and assets out of harm's way—but why, where, when, and how they will retreat," the study begins.
The researchers suggest that it is time to rethink retreat, which is often seen as a last resort and a sign of weakness. Instead, it should be seen as the smart option and an opportunity to build new communities.
"We propose a reconceptualization of retreat as a suite of adaptation options that are both strategic and managed," the paper states. "Strategy integrates retreat into long-term development goals and identifies why retreat should occur and, in doing so, influences where and when."
The billions of dollars spent to rebuild the Jersey Shore and to create dunes to protect from future storms after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 may be a waste if sea level rise inundates the entire coastline.
"There's a definite rhetoric of, 'We're going to build it back better. We're going to win. We're going to beat this. Something technological is going to come and it's going to save us,'" said A.R. Siders, an assistant professor with the disaster research center at the University of Delaware and lead author of the paper, to the New York Times. "It's like, let's step back and think for a minute. You're in a fight with the ocean. You're fighting to hold the ocean in place. Maybe that's not the battle we want to pick."
Rethinking retreat could make it a strategic, efficient, and equitable way to adapt to the climate crisis, the study says.
Dr. Siders pointed out that it has happened before. She noted that in the 1970s, the small town of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin moved itself out of the flood plain after one too many floods. The community found and reoriented the business district to take advantage of highway traffic and powered it entirely with solar energy, as the New York Times reported.
That's an important lesson now that rising sea levels pose a catastrophic risk around the world. Nearly 75 percent of the world's cities are along shorelines. In the U.S. alone coastline communities make up nearly 40 percent of the population— more than 123 million people, which is why Siders and her research team are so forthright about the urgency and the complexities of their findings, according to Harvard Magazine.
Some of those complexities include, coordinating moves across city, state or even international lines; cultural and social considerations like the importance of burial grounds or ancestral lands; reparations for losses or damage to historic practices; long-term social and psychological consequences; financial incentives that often contradict environmental imperatives; and the critical importance of managing retreat in a way that protects vulnerable and poor populations and that doesn't exacerbate past injustices, as Harvard Magazine reported.
If communities could practice strategic retreats, the study says, doing so would not only reduce the need for people to choose among bad options, but also improve their circumstances.
"It's a lot to think about," said Siders to Harvard Magazine. "And there are going to be hard choices. It will hurt—I mean, we have to get from here to some new future state, and that transition is going to be hard.…But the longer we put off making these decisions, the worse it will get, and the harder the decisions will become."
To help the transition, the paper recommends improved access to climate-hazard maps so communities can make informed choices about risk. And, the maps need to be improved and updated regularly, the paper said as the New York Times reported.
"It's not that everywhere should retreat," said Dr. Siders to the New York Times. "It's that retreat should be an option. It should be a real viable option on the table that some places will need to use."
Trending
Leaked documents show that Jair Bolsonaro's government intends to use the Brazilian president's hate speech to isolate minorities living in the Amazon region. The PowerPoint slides, which democraciaAbierta has seen, also reveal plans to implement predatory projects that could have a devastating environmental impact.
Hope may be on the horizon for the world's depleted coral reefs thanks to scientists who successfully reproduced endangered corals in a laboratory setting for the first time, according to Reuters.
Trending
Last week we received positive news on the border wall's imminent construction in an Arizona wildlife refuge. The Trump administration delayed construction of the wall through about 60 miles of federal wildlife preserves.
Drinking Fluoride-Treated Water During Pregnancy Could Lower Your Child's IQ, Study Finds
Drinking water treated with fluoride during pregnancy may lead to lower IQs in children, a controversial new study has found.