[briHass]

Though ostensibly supportive of your claim, the first article says it best a few pages in (surprisingly honest):

"To date, there are no clearly established biological mechanisms that could explain the role of red and processed meat in the process of CRC carcinogenesis."

In other words, we see some small signal in epidemiological studies, and we want to speculate about mechanistic causes, even though this has been tried before to no success.

[recallingmemory]

I would point to the conclusion of the study: "Red and processed meat consumption and its interaction with the gut microbiota are found to be major associated factors. The CRC-associated gut microbiota is made of pro-inflammatory or pro-carcinogenic bacteria and opportunistic pathogenic bacteria that enrich the tumor microenvironment by promoting disease progression."

I would also add that the World Health Organization after evaluating 800 studies classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen back in 2015, indicating a strong causal link to colorectal cancer, placing it in the same risk category as tobacco. [1]

While I linked to a single study in my original comment, I believe the results are more than a small signal.. enough for the WHO to come out and say processed meat does in fact have a causal link to CRC.

1: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/2015/11/03/report-s...