HONG KONG, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- Countries are grilling the World Health Organization after the U.N. body declared bacon, ham and sausages are leading causes of cancer.
The announcement on Monday has impacted global sales of processed meats, and countries in the European Union, China and South Korea are taking a stand and disputing the latest research, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
Chen Wei, standing vice president of China Meat Association, said Wednesday that the report was not carefully thought out and is "neither objective nor scientific," China News Network reported.
The Chinese spokesman said smoked and other processed meats have been consumed in the Chinese provinces of Szechuan and Hunan "for millennia," and those regions are not known for high rates of cancer.
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Chen also said the International Meat Secretariat in Paris had disagreed with the findings from the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer, but the report was published based on the "ruling of a majority."
German Food and Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt on Tuesday assured the German public that, "No one should be afraid when eating a bratwurst. As with everything, what counts is the quantity."
Neighboring Austria, Italy and even Australia challenged the WHO claims, calling the grouping of sausage with addictive substances like alcohol and tobacco "comical," Yonhap reported.
In South Korea, sales of ham and sausages plummeted by nearly 20 percent the day after the WHO findings were made public. One supermarket employee told South Korea press customers seemed to be avoiding the meat section more than usual on Tuesday and Wednesday.
But public denouncement of the WHO findings was most prominent in China, where crying emoticons crowded social media platforms, in responses to the announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported.
"So you're demanding that we all become like rabbits and eat grass?" one commenter wrote on social media platform Weibo.
