'Dereliction of duty' over UK cancer links to bacon

MORE than 5,000 Britons a year suffer from bowel cancer because ministers have failed to heed warnings over the dangers of processed meats such as bacon, claim health campaigners.

- By David Williamson Chief Political Commentator

The cost of treating patients since the International Agency for Research on Cancer sounded the alarm in a 2015 report is estimated to be at least £3billion.

Warnings should be put on meat packaging to highlight the cancer risk, it says, while Health Secretary Wes Streeting has been urged to ban nitrites in processed meats.

Professor Denis Corpet, of Toulouse University, one of the authors of the original report, said: “For a decade, we have known that nitrite-cured meats cause cancer, yet failed to act.