 What was the meat industry's response to these leading cancer charity's recommendation to stop eating processed meat, like bacon ham, hot dog, sausage, and lunch meat, now considered a Class 1 carcinogen? They acknowledged that the most recent International Cancer Prevention Guidelines now urge people to avoid processed meat. It's evident that such a statement represents a clear and present danger for the meat industry, reads one response in the journal Meat Science. As meat they say is a social necessity, how could anyone live without baloney? The challenge for the meat industry is to find a way to maintain the consumption of these convenience products while somehow not damaging public health. We're still not sure what it is in processed meat that's so carcinogenic, but the most probable educated guess for explaining the damaging effect of processed meats involved heme compounds, along with the nitrosamine in free radical formation, resulting ultimately in carcinogenic DNA damage. To reduce nitrosamines, they could remove the nitrites, something that the industry has been considering for decades because of the long-known toxic effects they cause. The industry adds them to keep the meat pink. There are evidently other coloring additives available. Nevertheless, it's going to be hard to get their industry to change in view of the positive effects of these substances as preservatives and desirable flavor and red color developing ingredients. No one wants green eggs in hand. It's like salt reduction in meat products. They'd like to, but one of the biggest barriers to salt replacement within the meat industry is cost, as salt is one of the cheapest food ingredients available. Now, there's a number of taste enhancers they can inject into the meat that can help compensate for the salt reduction, but some leave a bitter aftertaste, so they can also inject a patented, bitter-blocking chemical that can prevent taste nerve stimulation at the same time, the first of what may become a stream of products that are produced due to the convergence of food technology and biotech. Or they could always try adding non-meat materials to the meat. You could add fiber or resistant starch from beans that have protective effects against cancer. I mean, after all, the United States dietary fiber is under-consumed by most adults, indicating that fiber fortification in meat products could have health benefits. Failing to note, of course, that their products are one of the reasons the American diet is so deficient in fiber in the first place. The industry is all in favor of reformulating their products to cause less cancer, but obviously any such optimization has to achieve a healthier product without affecting the hedonic aspects. It's important to realize that nutritional and technological quality in the meat industry are inversely related, and improvement in one will lead to a deterioration of the other. They know the consumption of lard is not the best thing in the world, and heart disease being our number one killer and all. However, those downsides are in sharp contrast to their technological qualities that make them indispensable in the manufacture of meat products. Otherwise, you just don't get the same lard consistency. The pig's fat just doesn't get hard enough, and as a result, a fatty smear upon cutting or slicing can be observed on the cutting surface of the knife. So, yeah, less heart disease, but you gotta weigh the pros and cons.