Let's ban sausages now!

From The Free Society website

We learnt last month, thanks to the World Cancer Research Fund, that eating one sausage a day raises the likelihood of contracting bowel cancer by a fifth. Yes, processed meat’s a killer.

Indeed, Professor Martin Wiseman, the charity’s medical and scientific adviser, said: ‘We are more sure now than ever before that eating processed meat increases your risk of bowel cancer, and this is why SCRF recommends that people avoid eating it. The evidence is that whether you are talking about bacon, ham, or pastrami, the safest amount to eat is nothing at all.’

The trouble is, sausage-eating is socially acceptable in today’s society. The smell of cooking fat infects our bars and restaurants, even cinema lobbies. Pre-school children are offered sausages by their parents and then their peers, and before long they are hooked, perpetuating the cult of sausage eating.

Surely, now is the time to take action.

A new organisation ASH (Action on Sausages and Health) should be set up to push for a number of measures to be taken urgently. Firstly, there should be a vigorous campaign to point out the dangers of eating sausages.

It should as soon as is practicably possible (running down of freezer stocks etc) be illegal for anyone below the age of 18 to eat sausages. It will be an offence to sell sausages to anyone below this age. Hotlines will be set up so anyone seeing a butcher sneaking a chipolata to a minor can be reported to the authorities. Councils will be given government grants to employ sausage wardens to ensure the law is being complied with.

Sausages should be subject to a tax of 85 per cent. ASH believes the best way do discourage sausage-eaters is to hit them in the pocket.

Of course many people are unaware of the health risks associated with sausage eating. ASH therefore proposes signs taking up a minimum of 35 per cent of the packaging with wordings in association with the European Union Commission for Public Health. Suggested wordings include: ‘Sausages Kill’; ‘Sausage-eating harms you and those around you’; ‘Sausage-eaters die younger’

In time, it is envisaged that pictures of the results of sausage-eating should be shown – cancerous bowels in particular – and sausages should not be on public display but kept under counter. Butchers will of course claim that their livelihoods will be threatened, but the health of the nation is at stake.

These measures might seem draconian, but ultimately, what we are looking for is a society where sausage-eating is a socially unacceptable as smoking, and in time outlawed altogether.