On October 24th, 2015 the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that red-meat and

processed meat is linked to cancer. This has caused an uproar among avid meat eaters and
vegetarians the rights to I told you so. The WHO defines red-meats as all mammalian muscle
meat, including, beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse, and goat. And processed meat examples
include hot dogs (frankfurters), ham, sausages, corned beef, and biltong or beef jerky as well as
canned meat and meat-based preparations and sauces. Any meat that has been transformed
through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavor or improve
preservation is also included. This might cause a damper on your next family BBQ, but dont
expect to see many anti-meat commercials as you do anti-smoking and dont expect those
commercials to be paid for by the meat industry as anti-smoking commercials are.
The International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) created this study is 2014 decided to
study the health risks of meat as high-consumption has been linked to several serious diseases
and because middle and low economic countries has increased their meat consumption as well.
This has been a difficult result because past studies have found that there are health benefits to
the consumption of red-meat but now studies must focus on how much is a healthy amount of
consumption of meat.
It has been known for quite some time that people should be limiting their meat consumption for
health reasons especially linked to high-blood pressure, obesity and even gout but this new study
concludes that The IARC classified the red-meat as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to
humans for and Group 1, carcinogenic to humans for processed meats. These groups are
classified from Group 1: carcinogenic to humans, to Group 4, not carcinogenic to humans. While
the IARC says that although cigarettes and processed meat are in the same category, Group 1,
they do not pose the same health risks. The way the IARC sees the two is a difference between

risk and hazard. Despite substances being in the same category, the cancer risk associated with
them may be different from one another. The IARC finds that the hazard of cancer associated
with a substance is a matter of exposure while the risk measures the probability that cancer will
occur. But Group 2 has its own subgroups known as A and B, This is a difference between
possibly and probably. And red-meat is probably carcinogenic to humans, red-meat falls into
subgroup 2A. So what does this mean for consumers of red-meat? Based on limited evidence
that the consumption of red meat causes cancer in humans and strong mechanistic evidence
supporting a carcinogenic effect.. From IARCs website, they have their classifications and all
2A category, agents are there is usually convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer in
laboratory animals and some evidence that it could cause cancer in humans, but the evidence in
humans is not conclusive Therefore, meat eaters rejoice and vegetarians fight for the animals
forced to eat red-meat.