Standing on the stage of a European Union cancer conference this spring, a top Department of Health official presented a graph of the causes of cancer in Ireland. It showed alcohol as the fourth biggest cause of the disease, after smoking, excess weight and infection.
“This list was very useful for me two days ago when I was having what could only be called a fight with a colleague in our trade department,” Claire Gordon, manager of the Department of Health’s Tobacco and Alcohol Control Unit, told the audience of experts and officials.
The trade official had questioned whether Ireland’s new law mandating that cancer warning labels must be placed on alcohol products went against free trade principles, and whether Ireland would put such a label on meat given the country’s substantial meat exports, Ms Gordon recounted.
“Luckily I had that table, and I was able to say: alcohol causes three times as much cancer as processed meat does in Ireland,” she told the crowd.
“I understand that everybody in this room understands that it is a scientific fact that there is a link between alcohol and cancer, but we’ve had to fight to say that that is true.”
On June 21st, that fight will play out at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva, when its Technical Barriers to Trade Committee meets with Ireland’s new alcohol labelling law on the agenda.