Paul Little: Je suis bacon - long may I live

Bacon is not addictive. Its makers do not pump it full of substances that will induce dependency in the consumer. Photo / Getty Images

Bacon - what a way to go.

And almost as inevitable as death by smoking if you didn't look too closely at reports of a World Health Organisation edict that apparently listed the delicious pork variation as a carcinogen "just like tobacco".

Which it is in the same way that a primary school end-of-year ukulele concert is music "just like Beethoven".

As a bacon aficionado of some repute, I was shocked into action. That night I used pancetta instead of bacon in the carbonara.

I felt it would send a message and raise awareness, much like changing my Facebook profile picture to a rainbow or sleeping out for the homeless. Oh yes, "Je suis bacon".

Possibly the greatest health risk revealed by the report is that people will become so cynical about overstated health claims that they will ignore the real dangers altogether.

What the WHO was really talking about, if you got a chance to look closely, was that many processed meats use carcinogens in their processing.

Which is hardly news. The first I heard of this was in the 1980s when the husband of a friend died of bowel cancer because, it was said, he was addicted to smoked chicken and everyone knew that gave you cancer.

Of course, he wasn't addicted to it in a medical sense. He hadn't corrupted his physiology to the extent that he needed a daily dose of smoked chicken to get straight.

He was addicted to it in the sense we are addicted to golf or watching Breaking Bad.

Addiction is a word we throw around too readily, and that sends us off on the wrong track when it comes to matters like the comparison between tobacco and bacon.

Bacon is not addictive. Its makers do not pump it full of substances that will induce dependency in the consumer.

It is easy to moderate our consumption of bacon or not to eat it at all.

Nevertheless, the things that go into bacon are a problem. Too many nitrates and other nasty substances to act as preservatives are indeed bad for your health in the long run.

However, it is possible to preserve pork and make bacon using only salt and sugar - and some local manufacturers do.

You can also do this at home. Honestly, after a while, you don't miss the taste of carcinogens at all.

You don't see a lot of conservation minister Maggie Barry out and about, perhaps because when she does she makes remarks such as two that fell from her lips when celebrating a plan to support the birds whose annual journey takes them from Alaska to New Zealand via China.

One: "The godwit is one of the unsung heroes of migratory species."

Actually, it's one of the most sung. Its migratory powers are only slightly less sung than those of numerous species of whale.

Two: "It is a tremendous link that they provide for us between China, Alaska and New Zealand."

She was presumably referring to some obscure function the godwit carries out in our trade, communication or defence networks. I have to use the internet, postal service and planes as links between those three locations, but if she can get those birds to perform satisfactorily in any of those roles, that's definitely something to sing about.