The World Health Organisation is to list processed meat among the most cancer-causing substances, alongside arsenic and asbestos.
Fresh red meat is also due to join the ‘encyclopaedia of carcinogens’ and is likely to be ranked as only slightly less dangerous than the preserved products.
The classifications, by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, come amid mounting concern that meat fuels the disease which claims thousand of lives yearly.
The Department of Health’s scientific advisers recently concluded that red and processed meat ‘probably’ increase the odds of bowel cancer.
But the WHO is expected to go further by saying processed meat causes cancer.
Processed meat is made by smoking, curing, salting, or adding chemicals.
Examples are ham, bacon, pastrami and salami, as well as hot dogs and some sausages. Burgers are also expected to be included.
Red meat is expected to be one rung below, ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’.
Meat in general contains high concentrations of fat and it is thought the compound that gives meat its red colour may damage the bowel lining.
Processed meat has previously been blamed for one in 30 deaths and is seen as dangerous because preserving techniques can raise levels of cancer-causing chemicals.