"Linked to" in the sense that someone guessed that red meat might cause cancer, devised a bunch of experiments to prove it, and ended up after incredible amounts of effort with a result that shows just on the very limits of statistical significance that perhaps one person in a population the size of the UK might have a slightly elevated risk of cancer, maybe going from one in 15 to one in 14.

So, yes, "linked to".

You're going to die of heart disease, not bowel cancer caused by eating meat, even if you are a vegan. In fact, especially if you are a vegan, as it turns out, if you believe another ever-so-slightly-sketchy set of statistics. I personally don't, but I have noticed a lot of the people I know who eat a vegan diet don't eat particularly healthy stuff.