Statement From the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) Clarifying Processed Meat-Cancer Link
Posted on: Thursday, 7 August 2008, 18:01 CDT
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Institute for Cancer Research finds itself and its landmark expert report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective, caught in the middle of a furious PR battle between two interest groups.
The Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is using the AICR report's conclusions to bolster its campaign to get all processed meats out of U.S. schools. AICR is not affiliated with PCRM or this campaign.
The American Meat Institute (AMI) has responded with a statement attacking the AICR report by recycling the misleading arguments AMI made when the report was first published.
Here's the science behind the spin:
The AICR expert report was a five-year project that involved the work of nine independent teams of researchers, hundreds of peer reviewers, and a panel of 21 world-renowned experts. Evidence from over 7,000 studies on all aspects of cancer risk was reviewed; the report contains the experts' recommendations to lower cancer risk.
Among those recommendations: limit consumption of red meat. But according to the report: "The evidence on processed meat is even more clear-cut than that on red meat, and the data do not show any level of intake that can confidently be shown not to be associated with risk."
This does not suggest that an occasional hot dog at a ball game, or a slice of ham at Easter, will cause colon cancer. What the evidence does show is that making processed meats an everyday part of the diet, as many Americans do, poses clear and serious risks. That is why AICR now recommends avoiding processed meats.
The AMI statement contests this recommendation, citing alternate conclusions that were reached by a review of the evidence commissioned by AMI itself. We at AICR wish the multi-billion-dollar meat industry would take the money it uses to attack the objective conclusions of independent researchers and devote it to studying why diets high in processed meats are so consistently associated with troubling increases in colorectal cancer risk. With such efforts, it may prove possible to isolate the particular cause or causes and make processed meats safer.
No amount of meat industry spin can change the fact that the exhaustive AICR report has been embraced by the international scientific and medical community and represents overwhelming scientific consensus.
American Institute for Cancer Research
CONTACT: Glen Weldon of the American Institute for Cancer Research,+1-202-328-7744
Web Site: http://www.aicr.org/
Source: PRNewswire-USNewswire
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