Experts are calling for cigarette-style cancer warnings on bacon and ham packaging, warning that chemicals used to cure these meats can cause bowel cancer.
The demand comes 10 years after the World Health Organization (WHO) classified processed meat as carcinogenic to humans, placing it in the same category as tobacco and asbestos. Scientists say successive UK governments have done “virtually nothing” since then to protect consumers from the risks posed by nitrites, which are used to preserve processed meats and give them their pink colour.
According to the Coalition Against Nitrites, inaction over the past decade has led to about 54,000 bowel cancer cases and cost the NHS an estimated £3bn. In an open letter to Health Secretary Wes Streeting, four of the scientists who contributed to the WHO’s 2015 warning urged mandatory warning labels and a phase-out of nitrites from processed meat production.
“Consumers deserve clear information,” said Prof Denis Corpet of Toulouse University. “Most people don’t realise the WHO puts nitrite-cured meats in the same carcinogenic category as tobacco.”
The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) supports limiting processed meat consumption, noting “clear evidence” linking it to bowel cancer, though it stopped short of endorsing health warnings.
Prof Chris Elliott, another signatory to the letter, criticised the government’s inaction, warning that every year of delay “means more preventable cancers and greater strain on the NHS.”
The Department of Health and Social Care responded that the Food Standards Agency maintains the link between nitrites and cancer remains inconclusive.
