IT’S been a calamitous week for the carnivorous, with the alarming news that processed meats can cause cancer.

According to the World Health Organisation, processed meats such as bacon (oooh, yum), sausages (mmmm...) and ham (yes, please!) do cause cancer. Oh – suddenly, I’m not quite so hungry.

This news is worse than discovering that the love of your life has been cheating on you – you can get another “significant other”, but bacon? That’s irreplaceable. Still, I can have a burger, right? No?

Damn. I think I just heard some vegetarians sniggering.

“Processed” means anything treated to extend it’s shelf-life, including smoking, curing, or adding salt or preservatives.

Frighteningly, the WHO says that 50g of processed meat per day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 per cent.

That’s a measly two rashers of bacon.

At the weekend I had a bacon sarnie for breakfast, a ham sandwich for lunch and sausage casserole for dinner – I’m surprised I’m still around to write this column (but do check the obituaries section, just in case).

An estimated 34,000 deaths per year are attributable to cancer caused by diets high in processed meat.

Surely this is great for your friendly local butcher? If processed meats are off the menu, then fresh meat must be the sensible, healthy, alternative.

Bad news on that front – the WHO helpfully added that red meats generally are “probably” also carcinogenic. So that’s pork, beef and lamb off the menu too. If I were a chicken right now, I’d be practising my mooing or finding somewhere remote and wearing a leather jacket in the hope of not becoming lunch for the paranoid, meat-deprived, masses.

To add to the sense of alarm, the WHO report places meat in the same dangerous category as plutonium and alcohol, which would be one hell of a night out, but not one you would be wise to repeat very often.

Adding a little perspective to this worrisome story, a million people die in the UK each year from smoking-related cancer, and a further 600,000 die from cancer caused by alcohol.

Whilst this is all genuinely concerning for us as we munch our way through the day, the list of things that do, or are alleged to, give you cancer is seemingly endless, with everything from the sun to your phone, pollution to being overweight, and even the inescapability of genetics, regularly blamed. An awful lot of what we do, eat or are exposed to increases our risk, and much of it is out of our control.

So should we back off the bacon, stop the sausage and hide from the ham? I’m not a doctor (I went to a fancy dress party as one once, but I’m told that doesn’t count) so I’m not qualified to lecture, but my entirely unsolicited advice would be: Everything in moderation.

If every meal involves ripping open a packet of meatiness, you might be enjoying life, but you may be shortening it dramatically too.

I’m off for a nice salad. Maybe with gravy.