The North American Meat Institute and American Meat Science Association have once again teamed up to produce new Meat MythCrusher videos, addressing many of the common consumer misconceptions about meat and poultry. The newest video discusses the commonly reported myth that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found 800 studies linking red and processed meat to cancer. The video features Andy Milkowski, Ph.D., adjunct professor, department of animal sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who explains that the actual number of studies considered was a fraction of the 800.
“They started with 800 studies, but then they had to sift and winnow through those studies in order to determine which ones were really relevant to the questions they were asking,” said Milkowski. In the end, only 32 of those were truly applicable, some of which showed a statistical association between meat and cancer and some of which showed no link, according to Milkowski.